Skyland Trail was my employer for 9 months. During that time period I went above and beyond to fulfill my work obligations as per my Job Description. Regardless of my attempts to succeed in my position, my supervisor continually searched for negative things to comment on during our regularly scheduled meetings. Each time that my supervisor would give me "constructive criticism", I would immediately attempt to follow her recommendations, even to the point of working excessive overtime and on the weekends. On one occassion my personal integrity was questioned in that my supervisor basically called me a "liar" concerning a business trip that I had completed. I was given conflicting instructions and never knew exactly what was expected of me. I would be told to accomplish a certain goal, and then later told that the time that I utilized to complete that goal should have been used more constructively. Skyland Trail attempts to present a facade of "caring" about the health and well-being of their employees, but they are completely unsympathetic when employees suffer major family emergencys or severe illnesses. If an employee is sick, mulitiple documentation is required from physicians concerning the illness and then employees are not allowed to follow their physician's instructions. For example, I was given instructions by my physician to wear a certain type of shoe along with a supportive brace for a leg injury. My supervisor would not allow me to wear the shoe recommended by my physician, stating that it did not fall within Skyland Trail dress code policies. Therefore, I had to go against my physician's instructions and subsequently did not heal properly. Skyland Trail employees are expected to work over 40 hour work weeks, including nights and weekends and are not given equal comp or flex days. For example, if an employee works and entire weekend, he or she is given only one flex/comp day for the time worked. Employees are commended for working excess hours, working on weekends, and putting their work before their family and personal life. A proper balance of work and personal/family life is not encouraged. Skyland Trail is a non-profit organization which proclaims a mission help individual's suffering from mental illness, yet Skyland Trail clients are often laughed at and ridiculed in staff meetings. Jokes are made at the client's expense. The bottom line at Skyland Trail is filling all of the beds and keeping the census at 100%. It all comes down to money. Employee's mental health and wellness is not considered or considered a priority. Staff appear nervous, stressed, anxious, and apprehensive at meetings. I was terminated from my position at Skyland Trail only a few weeks after my Performance Evaluation. My Performance Evaluation contained a large amount of negative feedback, with very little positive reinforcement. I was criticized due to excessive absenteeism due to a serious illness, and a serious injury that occurred on the job. Even though I was recovering from a serious injury, in an attempt at improving my work performance as per the feedback I had received during my performance evaluation, I worked very hard, against my physician's advice and was still terminated without any reason or explanation. Everything that I was asked to do in my Performance Evaluation, I corrected and arrived at work 30 minutes prior to my scheduled work time. Worked several weekends and evenings. I feel that I was terminated for several reasons: 1. My supervisor puts work above everything else in her life. Because I attempted to maintain a healthy balance, she stated that I do not have a "proper work ethic". 2. I wrote comments in reference to the negative feedback that I received in my Performance Evaluation. I believe that these comments angered my supervisor, even though I was respectful and honest in my responses. 3. I suffered a case of Influenza and a serious ankle injury, within a short period of time. Even though I worked from home during this time period, accomplishing more that I would have accomplished had I been in the office, Skyland Trail's old fashioned and rigid culture holds that employee's should work 10-12 hour days, weekends, go above and beyond continuously, all in the name of making money. If I had a family member suffering from a mental illness, I would NEVER recommend Skyland Trail. Clients are numbers and dollar signs. When a client can no longer afford Skyland Trail services, he or she will be discharged, with little thought as to the client's progress or recovery. The stiff, rigid, old-fashioned work environment does not allow for creative thinking or thinking outside of the box. Employees are expected to perform and produce like robots and are constantly being put under more and more pressure to "produce". I have worked in the non-profit world for over 10 years and I have NEVER worked in a place in which I endured so much work related stress, work-place harassment, and inflexibility. Unless you want to dedicate your entire life to a job, have no family life, personal life, or hobbies, I would search for employment ANYWHERE else but at Skyland Trail.

Skyland Trail
1903 North Druid Hills Rd.
Atlanta, Georgia
United States
Phone: 4043158333
www.skylandtrail.org

Skyland Trail
George West Mental Health Foundation
Atlanta, GA

SKYLAND TRAIL - TOP 10 WORST PLACES TO WORK IN ATLANTA
An UN-Equal Opportunity, For profit "non-profit" Employer

Skyland Trail, Atlanta GA – Bitter staff, preoccupied ($$$) executive leadership, ineffective management, poor treatment of staff, several claims of racial discrimination all affect client recovery and adds to the bill for treating clients.

I am an employee of an Atlanta-based NPO, George West Mental Health Foundation d/b/a Skyland Trail. I've only been here a couple of years on the clinical side yet it seems as though I've watched the entire evolution of man happen here with all the comings-and-goings of staff. In fact, I haven't seen this high an attrition rate in my 20-year career. At any given time 25% of the staff is either being welcomed aboard, being wished a farewell or in some cases, just come up missing with no further explanation. I mean, are these people still alive? What happened to them? Should we all be concerned?

Should a Mental Health Foundation – a clinical operation dedicated to the treatment of mental health disorders, experts in the field of counseling, nationally recognized for building self-esteem, problem resolution and restoring quality of life – have so many problems with employee satisfaction? Many of the employees have established relationships with clients and deal with them professionally on a daily basis. Can a someone please respond with how this revolving door of staff affects a client when their treatment team is continually changing? Maybe this is a question for our Medical Director, Dr. Raymond (Ray) Kotwicki, MD, MPH.

Some of the problems can be attributed to the Executive Team. Basically, the team is comprised of 4 people: Elizabeth (Beth) Finnerty-Martin, John (Ricky) Padgett, Dr. Raymond Kotwicki, MD, MPH, and a new addition, Connie Lombardo.

Beth works really hard at satisfying the board and pushing to get our many millions of dollars in the door. If you only knew what kind of requests the board makes (esp. Mr. Mark West) you'd fall out of your chair. She is so focused on satisfying him and his friends (i.e. Board of Director's) that I don't think she realizes that her interaction with staff from an operational stance is limited to basically one meeting every 3 months. These meetings are two-fold. 1. We see that she's still alive and breathing; 2. We get to find out the winner of these two awards (completely rigged) for employee and client recognition. Then we go around the room and a token four or five of the executive team's favorites speak out about their respective areas of accomplishment and Beth quickly tells them, "thank you guys for all you do for Skyland Trail" – the usual. The meeting quickly comes to a halt and we waste a few hundred on bad food.

Ricky is the company's CFO. It is his job to make sure that all the bases are covered and that the company remains in good financial and operational standing despite some of the "questionable transactions". He presents himself to be this down-to-earth, country, hospitable, everyday kinda guy – but just wait until the shows over and the curtain falls. He is everything but those four descriptors. You see, he has a certain social circle at work. With him you're either in – or you're out. When you're in (and I've been "in" at one point), life is bliss and you enjoy the all of privileges he can offer. One of them is bigger annual raises (trust me, the people that get them don't have a problem letting us 3%-ers know about it); regular promotions; constant acknowledgment for great effort by the executive team; and additional liberties like comp-time, budgetary flexibility, etc. The rest of us ("outs" - yeah, I'm an "out" right now) get the opposite.

Dr. Raymond (Ray) Kotwicki, MD, MPH is a good guy… until you get on his bad side – better yet, if Ricky or Beth have it out for you, you better be sure that he'll have it out for you too. They kind of operate like a 3-headed beast. He's hardly ever at work and does ¼ of the work he originally was hired to do. Yet, he's continually praised? I'm sure the guy's salary is minimum six-figures for 10 hours per week? How can a non-profit justify this?

Connie Lombardo is kinda "not so much". She is our VP of marketing and development. She's been here half a year, and she hasn't raised a single penny of new capital? It makes me wonder what the heck she does all day beside harass her staff with administrative tasks she feels she's too good to execute (like stamp an envelope), micromanagement like you wouldn't believe and a totally fake personality that kind of makes you cringe when you speak with her. She is very deceptive and will cover up her mistakes by placing the blame on her staff and others. Is this an example a leader should be setting? A friend of mine that works in that building has constant complaints about watching her unfairly distribute work among her staff, instances of discrimination, and she even goes as far as being just downright condescending and rude - I've seen it for myself. She apparently thinks she walks on water (and so do Beth and Ricky, both of whom give her constant praise). But, if a person can perform these miracles, shouldn't we have pulled in at least $500.00 in new revenue from her efforts? I don't get it. I'm sure she's close to the top and from my view (and my co-worker's view) her salary is a complete waste! Even if she only made $350, 000 per year, we just wasted $175, 000 in six months!!! How can we, as a non-profit, justify this? -Oh yeah, I think she's been designing envelopes or something for the past couple of months. And she's doing a great job? Connie Lombardo. Great name.

Other complaints include a worthless benefits package, unfair treatment among staff, uneven workload distribution, a huge divide in salary between staff and management (from what I read, someone in HR is constantly sending HR print jobs to our printer LOL) and the company refuses to promote from within (except if you're on the A-list). Skyland Trail is a clinical operation that has a primary care clinic built-in to its program, yet staff cannot get adequate medical needs of their own met? I know several employees that need medical attention but cannot afford to pay the high deductibles and the bills that will result in seeking medical attention. This has been in the top 5 main complaints for a number of years, yet it remains to be unrecognized by the executive team. Why even ask us to fill out employee surveys if the plan is ultimately doing nothing with the information? This is like the fourth one I've submitted with the same crap on it. Maybe I should submit my concerns to the board - or better yet, to our donors. Our finance people and executive staff would probably all jump out the window at the same time.

There have been numerous openings that would allow staff to grow into positions that provide a better wage and an opportunity for career advancement. It has been a trend for the company to continually choose to hire under qualified, outside candidates instead of seeking qualified in-house staff to promote despite the employees' constant applications to these openings. I don't get it. What's the problem? It is a common understanding among staff that the only way to advance is to seek employment with another company, yielding a very high attrition rate. In all, the company would much rather hire and train an under qualified candidate from outside the organization as opposed to recognizing the good work and capabilities of existing staff.

I believe this can be a great company if the games would stop at the upper levels. The belittling and condescending attitude from management has to stop in order to get back to the business of rehabilitating our clients. How can staff of a mental health organization effectively treat clients while suffering from mental and emotional stress? Our clients end up suffering greatly and their treatment plans drag out because of the constant instability. What's greater is the cost incurred by our clients and their families in paying for the additional time for their family member to recover in our program. This is a shame and a great disservice to our community. It is my wish that our executive team and the board would connect at the ground-floor level and resolve these issues, treat people fairly and run this as a mental health rehabilitation center it's named to be and not just a cash cow.