Current and former employees at Refuge have described being bullied at the domestic abuse charity and have criticised its working culture.
Reviews posted in the past year on Glassdoor, a website that rates employers, describe a “toxic” working environment at the charity, with staff “bullied” and “overworked”.
A group of current and former Refuge employees told Civil Society that they themselves had been bullied at the charity and criticised the way concerns raised about staff treatment and overwork have been handled.
They said many staff at the charity were being “stretched beyond capacity” and that workers were made to feel like “the problem” by leaders after raising concerns with them.
The group also said former staff felt unable to speak publicly about their concerns after leaving the charity.
Lornette Pemberton, Refuge’s director of people and culture, said the charity took the allegations “incredibly seriously” and was “appalled that anyone has had such a bad experience working at Refuge”.
However, she said the charity’s “exit interview data does not show that staff leave Refuge because they feel bullied” and that over the past two years it had “worked hard to create a transparent, safe and open culture where everyone feels valued and respected”.
Staff survey
Refuge previously faced reports of a “toxic” working environment from former employees under its former chief executive Sandra Horley.
Horley retired in 2020 and Ruth Davison was hired as her permanent replacement the following year.
Extracts of a 2022 staff survey, seen by Civil Society, show a decline in the proportion of Refuge staff who felt able to “comfortably cope with my workload” compared to three years earlier.
It also showed a decrease in the proportion of staff who felt able to “strike the right balance between my work and home life”.
Positive responses to the statement “Refuge does enough to support my health and wellbeing at work” were also below the charity’s not-for-profit benchmark.
Refuge would not share the full 2022 survey results but said that most results showed an improvement on 2019, with “pride, commitment to stay and motivation to excel” improving the most.
It also said that the charity had developed an action plan to address the areas of concern raised by the survey including workload management, caseload management, recruitment and retention, wellbeing and psychological safety.
Pemberton said: “The changes that we have made, and are making, take on board the feedback from staff in our 2019 staff survey.
“These include the introduction of clinical supervision for all staff, a pay and benefits review, improvements in our internal communications and an increased focus on diversity and inclusion.
“We are pleased that our most recent survey in 2022 shows that staff are feeling the benefits of these improvements. This is still a journey; to embed long-term cultural change takes time.”
‘Stretched beyond capacity’
Refuge has fluctuated in size as a charity in recent years, almost doubling its income to £34m during the year to March 2021, amid an increase in need for domestic abuse services during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the year to March 2022, the charity recorded an income of £24.3m, with 356 employees and 131 volunteers, according to the Charity Commission website.
It paid £179,000 to staff in redundancy payments in 2021-22, up from £72,000 the year prior.
The group of current and ex-employees described a “shocking, high turnover of staff” at the charity, with many people being “stretched beyond capacity”.
They said some staff had to work 15-hour days and criticised the way concerns were handled.
A Glassdoor review from September 2022 says: “You’re required to work out of hours once every couple of weeks which will leave you extremely exhausted, and you’re still required to work full day hours even if you had a call out during the evening every single day.
“Therefore, for that week you're working literally 24/7. Sometimes you often have to take on more cases than you can handle due to staff shortages and managers still expect everything to run like there's two staff members on site.”
Pemberton said: “Our incredible staff are passionate, empathetic and hardworking. Through the Covid pandemic, they worked incredibly hard to keep our vital services, including the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline, open.
“Emerging from the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis means that demand for our services continues to grow and staff continue to perform under enormous pressure. I want to acknowledge that this work is far from easy.
“Over the past two years, our CEO and senior leadership team have worked hard to create a transparent, safe and open culture where everyone feels valued and respected, so it is deeply upsetting to read that some former staff did not have a positive experience of working here – and that they did not feel able to raise these concerns internally.”
‘Intimidation’
The group of current and ex-employees said that some staff who have raised concerns about working conditions at the charity had been “ignored” and those defending other staff members “faced intimidation”.
“The person raising the concern becomes the problem. And the remedy is not to change the leadership’s attitude or ways of doing things, but instead to make the staff member the problem,” they said.
“Every person who speaks up to question either the CEO or the senior leadership team – they’re gaslighted, they’re made to doubt themselves.”
Refuge runs a whistleblowing helpline for its staff, which it says received zero reports of whistleblowing incidents from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.
However, the group of current and ex-employees said: “People are nervous to go to that line.”
Refuge said the helpline and its 24-hour employee assistance programme were both “absolutely confidential, run by an independent, external company”.
Pemberton said: “We encourage, and provide many ways for, all staff to speak up. Our staff forum meets with the CEO and me monthly and this staff feedback has prompted and supported many changes that continue to improve our culture.”
The group also said former staff felt unable to speak publicly about their concerns after leaving the charity.
Refuge said: “Occasionally someone will leave Refuge under agreed terms. Whilst both parties are expected to maintain confidentiality about the terms of the agreement, we never require people to keep their reasons for leaving confidential or prevent them from speaking about their time working at Refuge.”
‘Bullies make life miserable’
The group of current and ex-employees said there had recently been “a massive effort and tons of energy and time spent by the senior leadership and the CEO to spruce up the image”.
“And that’s the problem. It’s all a superficial spruce up,” they said.
The charity currently has an average rating of 2.6 stars out of five on Glassdoor.
One review posted on the website last month describes “a toxic work environment in which incompetent staff/managers and bullies make life miserable for both staff and clients”.
The review continues: “Inept managers and bullies are seemingly rife in the organisation – look at the reviews – yet nothing seems to actually be done about it.
“Until things change, Refuge will likely continue to struggle with recruitment and retention. I enjoy working with survivors, but at the moment I would advise anyone considering working at Refuge to look elsewhere for this type of career.”
A review from March says: “Mismanagement over last 18 months means massive change on the way. Self seeking CEO more interested in becoming media personality with no empathy or affinity to those she’s supposed to be supporting.
“Terrible decision making without proper consultation from experts within organisation is bringing charity into disrepute. Bullying and toxicity from some at top.”
Another from March says: “Bullying, accepting of racism, no support for employees apart from employee assistance line, understaffed, low salaries in comparison to how it was a few years ago, not a good place to work for mothers especially.”
Pemberton said: “We have a respect, inclusion and belonging strategy and action plan, organisational values and an equity, equality, diversity and inclusion policy. These were all co-created with staff.
“In 2022 we carried out a comprehensive pay and grading review, with external salary benchmarking, this added 6% to our pay bill with individual pay rises ranging from 2-14% based the job evaluation and salary benchmarking of their role. The outcomes of the review were implemented August 2022 backdated to April 2022.”
Flexible working
The group of current and ex-employees said that the charity’s “attitude to flexible working is that it is perceived as being nonsense”.
They described negative attitudes to working from home and said there was no formal time off in lieu process.
Pemberton said: “In 2022, we made it possible for all staff to request flexible working from their first day of employment and, when launching this new policy, invited all staff to submit a request. We make it very clear in our leave policy that staff can accrue and use time off in lieu.”
Meanwhile, the Charity Commission said it had “no active concerns regarding Refuge and are therefore not engaging with the charity at this time”.
“All charities should be safe and trusted environments in which to work or volunteer. We take all concerns raised seriously and encourage anyone concerned about a charity to contact us,” a spokesperson for the regulator said.
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