AARP Public Policy Institute - Researcher AARP Employee Review

As others here have mentioned, AARP manages staff through rolling layoffs. Every few years there's a new CEO who decides to leave his or her mark by laying off staff. The process always takes months and causes endless anxiety and insecurity even among staff who are spared (this time around). As others have also mentioned, the meeting culture is ridiculous. Most people attend 2-3 meetings a day, and managers attend many more a day. Many of these meetings are during lunch because all the available people are booked up during regular hours. The Public Policy Institute is a mixed bag. Some teams function well and have competent bosses. Others teams, not so much, with bosses who are overwhelmed and blame staff for their own delays in reviewing or making decisions. There's a lot of cliquishness, including among managers patting each other on the back and giving each other bonuses, and unfortunately this is modeled by the EVP (chief policy officer). Good luck getting hired for the EVP's personal staff if you're not blond. AARP wastes tons of money on various things. There are the gimmicky campaigns that have little meaning and are meant to give members a sense of participating without actually influencing. There's the $$$ innovation lab with moss growing on the walls that few use because it's inconvenient to get to. Finally, in a throwback to outdated management practices, the new CEO is moving most staff into cubicles. Everybody outside management is going to a cubicle, although some squeaky wheels have been spared at least temporarily. In PPI, the result is that junior and senior researchers who have to think for a living are squashed into cubes with little room for their research files and the noise level is high because they're surrounded by other unhappy researchers who have to talk to their bosses, the plumber, or anybody else during their workdays.