A Place Where I Belong

"Safety and health... are the bare minimum of what every human being is entitled to in any workplace" and these standards should be non-negotiable.

"I wish we can move away from the idea that personnel matters are just distractions. They tell you we need to do work. Like, we need to focus on our mission. And anybody who is involved is a distraction, especially the victim."

"Every leader needs to take a class on empathy and kindness."

"I tell leaders, say what you mean, do what you say."

"It is not just, like, one person doing it, like, there's a whole system of management allowing it, that protects managers."

"For me, healing also looks like moving on to a healthier work environment where I am valued, safe, and productive."

"It's like, how do I go to my manager when I know that my bully is friends with him and I know that they will stick together. I mean, I have seen it before. It is really like, uh, incestuous family. Everybody knows that. Everybody."

"The culture was an authoritarian culture, very hierarchy-based. Cultures that I've worked in, and you wouldn't know it by the documents that they put out. Because everybody says we collaborate, we work as a team, we appreciate diversity, blah blah blah, right?"

"Toxic, unhealthy, and sloppy personnel management. Not inclusive… Personnel management at my organization in general is chaotic and, um, sloppy. Some departments are worse than others."

"The culture was hypocritical. All this talk about Diversity and inclusion. They love to talk about that. I had to go to so many meetings and training about diversity and inclusion. So yeah, hypocrisy and what the business conduct guidelines say, and what was actually embodied and… and held accountable in the actual work environment, total discrepancy there."

"Employees were very obedient. Very obedient, that's why they didn't complain because we all knew the power these people have."

"I wish that they would have had, uh, proper and fair conflict resolution process, and I wish that they understood how to create safe space by removing culture bias, by training your people to be kind, by training your people that kindness is rewarded, and bullying is punished."

"How about beginning to have periodic check-ins with their employees. Maybe not even out of necessity, just to check in, how are things going? Um, or there may not be situations broiling like this. Just to check in. Be a human. Listen to people's experiences, because if people feel heard, they feel supported. They feel supported, they can perform better, they can excel. Everybody rises."

"I was disheartened that my supervisors didn't kind of step in more and be like, okay, let's go have a talk, let's go sit down. They just were like, you have to get along."

"To me, that created a culture where people learned that speaking up would not matter, because if leadership saw all of this and still did nothing, then why would anyone believe their voice would make a difference?"