Culture ‘toxic’ at Guiding
Losing members, money and workers
GirlGuiding New Zealand faces an uncertain future as it grapples with declining membership, disaffected staff and six-figure deficits.
Current and former staff allege the organisation has been mismanaged and has a toxic work culture – charges its chief executive say create ‘‘false impressions and undermine our hardworking team’’.
GirlGuiding New Zealand has suffered six-figure deficits in each of the last five years – which if accumulated would total almost $11 million in the five years to December 2021.
Covid-19 has further affected the charity, with membership down 5% in 2020.
Up to 30 of 43 staff have left since the beginning of 2021, including seven in the last fortnight. Some who spoke to The Press alleged they were undervalued, undermined and under-resourced.
‘‘Guiding does great things for girls . . . but on a staffing level the organisation is a truly disturbing place to work,’’ said one former employee, Alex*, who hoped speaking out would bring about change to ensure GirlGuiding endured.
‘‘When people talk about guiding, they talk about what Girl Guides was decades ago . . . the blocking of creativity and innovation has led to a more stale offering which girls don’t necessarily want to be part of,’’ he said.
Girl Guiding started in 1910 as the Girl Peace Scouts – an offshoot of scouting. Membership boomed post World War II and peaked in the 1970s with 39,000 uniformed members.
Paid membership has been largely static since the 1980s – sitting about 6300 in 2021 – as it competed with other leisure activities and organisations, such as Scouts where girls make up 20% of the membership base. Those fees brought in about $2m of the $3.5m revenue in 2021, though that dropped during 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The famous Girl Guides biscuits have also been a vital revenue source, bringing in $15.6m of net profit in the 10 years to 2017.
After recording deficits in 2008-09, the organisation reduced staffing and made surpluses from 2010 to 2015. But in 2016, the organisation recorded a $2.7m deficit. Deficits since have ranged from $1.2m to $2m per year. Subsequently, the organisation has had to find money from other sources, including the attempted sale of a flagship property in Auckland.
Former employees believed the organisation was top-heavy when it came to salaries. Employee remuneration/wages were $2.7m in 2021, with a source alleging one senior employee was earning more than $200,000 a year – at the expense of marketing work and resources to attract membership.
In 2016, the number of full and part-time staff increased from 40 to 47.
‘‘It just doesn’t really wash with me when we have a small base in terms of income,’’ another former staff member, Sam*, said.
Chief executive Susan Coleman, who took over in March 2012, said staffing increases were in line with the organisation’s strategic decisions. She referred salary questions to the board, but it declined to comment.
When asked about the financial deficits, Coleman cited the ‘‘challenging time’’ for most membership organisations.
Scouts Aotearoa chief executive Joshua Tabor said its own youth membership decline, which followed a 2017 peak, reflected the overall decline in participation in the recreation sector.
Tabor said some international national scouting groups had lost
more than 60% of their members through the pandemic.
A costly flop
A digital platform called Explore for girls to use at home for $8.75 a month, which GirlGuiding NZ launched in 2020, attracted about 100 subscriptions, sources said.
Setting it up came at significant cost and marketing ‘‘didn’t really see any result’’, one former employee, Kelly*, said.
Coleman was warned it was not financially viable, but said it was a ‘‘board decision’’, Kelly said.
For Sam, giving girls more screen time when the organisation had a strong practical outdoor reputation was ludicrous.
Coleman did not accept that the programme had been unsuccessful and would not rule out spending more money on it. ‘‘It’s still under development.’’
She declined to say whether a cost analysis was done before committing to the programme, or if she was advised it would not be financially successful by employees tasked with looking at the figures. She would not say how much the programme cost to implement.
Ex-employees believed the organisation was stuck in the past. When a former staff member wanted to put a Pride logo on GirlGuiding social media posts during Pride Week, she was allegedly told there was not a ‘‘protocol’’ and some volunteers would complain if she did.
Concerned about the organisation not being inclusive, the employee wrote an email to the chief executive but alleged she did not receive a response.
Coleman said there ‘‘definitely’’ were protocols around what they did and how they did it. She ‘‘wasn’t sure’’ if she knew of the incident.
‘‘You know . . . a lot happens.’’
Toxic workplace claim
Former staff said the mass resignations stemmed from a toxic workplace environment. They alleged belittling of staff in meetings in front of their peers, employees leaving meetings in tears, and eroding mental health and wellbeing.
The Press has seen a list of about 30 employees who left or resigned in the past 18 months, including seven in the past fortnight.
The Press has also seen two external reviews of workplace culture in 2020 and 2021. The 2020 report paints a bleak picture of the work environment. More than 90% of the 36 staff who completed a survey said the organisation did not effectively deal with poor behaviour.
Just 36% of staff believed the organisation cared about its people’s wellbeing, 50% said there wasn’t a common purpose, and close to 70% said the communication wasn’t open and honest.
Oppressive, disengaged, bureaucratic and siloed were all words used to describe the workplace culture.
One respondent said people were scared to speak up or stand up for themselves because of the fear of losing their job. They were afraid of being judged.
Coleman pointed to survey results the following year, in which 94% of the team agreed GirlGuiding was a better organisation than it was in 2020. Across all metrics there was an average score increase of 14%, she said.
She admitted ‘‘people weren’t as happy as we would like them to be’’ in 2020, and said an external consultant was hired to help ‘‘co-design’’ the working environment.
Coleman said she could not stop staff resigning if they saw a better opportunity elsewhere.
‘‘Challenging times creates uncertainty for some people, and it has been a challenging time.’’
She agreed there was still work to be done – ‘‘and we are doing it’’.
Sources said some staff were made to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) when they left. Coleman would not comment on this, but said the charity was transparent. She declined to comment on whether NDAs were appropriate in a charity.
Several ex-employees said they contacted board members about the toxic workplace, but nothing was done.
The national board, in a statement, said it took any and all complaints seriously and followed a comprehensive complaints procedure.
Land and buildings
According to valuations in 2012, GirlGuiding New Zealand owned almost $14m in land and buildings around the country, much of it donated.