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      Community Science

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      Community Science Reviews

      4.0

      79% would recommend to a friend

      (18 total reviews)

      David M. Chavis

      77% approve of CEO

      79% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.4

      Diversity and inclusion

      4.1

      Compensation and benefits

      4.1

      Career opportunities

      3.9

      Culture and values

      3.9

      Senior management

      3.2

      Work/Life balance

      Community Science has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 18 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Community Science employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management and consulting industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      18 reviews
      2.0
      7 Jun 2012

      A good mission poorly managed

      Managing associate
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      CS has a good mission -- to develop and use the latest science of community development to support community change initiatives -- which makes for meaningful work. And since this is a small company that takes on a lot of contracts at once, the work is varied. When I worked there, the staff were another big "pro:" I found staff on the whole to be talented professionals who were also friendly and supportive. And to his credit, the President and CEO David Chavis is committed to providing quality products to clients, and promotes a company culture of communicating and managing expectations with clients accordingly. Salaries and benefits, which include a profit-sharing program, are also competitive.

      Cons

      Unfortunately, I did not see much evidence of Chavis and upper management extending the same standard of integrity to their employees. On the contrary, Chavis and his co-principals often communicated expectations to employees that were at odds with deeper (operating) expectations. For instance, CS uses a billable hours system with the stated expectation that 90% of an employee's hours should be billable. However, the reality was that the assignments often entailed many more hours than was billed (often the result of CS underbidding contracts). Thus, to stay on budget, employees like myself were pressured to work "off the clock," which amounted to hours that we could not count towards our 90% billable hours goal. This by itself would not necessarily be a problem so long as our non-billable hours was a reasonable amount. However, on top of billable work, we were expected to perform other duties and tasks such as professional development, grant-writing, and trouble-shooting issues that often resulted from poorly conceived and communicated tasks. These non-billable activites often totaled significantly more than 4 hours/week (10% in a 40 hour week). Employees were given an implicit choice: either work significantly more than 40 hours per week (55-65 hours/week is probably realistic) or fall short of goals. I perceived an imbalance in work and life among the owners and top management which they expected of the rest of us. If you are not married or have a a family and are willing to put in those kinds of hours, CS could be a good place to get your feet wet in the community development consulting world. Otherwise, I would look elsewhere. The fact is, CS is too small and the owners show little inclination to support your success in an environment where much of the turbulence originates among managers and owners unwilling or unable to own their role in those problems. For the employee, more or less, it's sink or swim. In addition to the problems already mentioned (e.g., underbidding contracts and communicating misleading expectations to employees), they include micromanagement and role confusion that often generate problems of their own.. Instead of owning their role in these problems, however, the owners routinely displaced the responsibility onto their employees. This in turn created an organizational culture plagued by lack of accountability and defensive posturing, exacerbated by Chavis' occasional angry outbursts and threats. The message that we employees got was: CS is pretty much a one-man show supported by an inner circle of co-principals. I for one, anyway, never felt really comfortable enough to share my professional opinions about our work or about the workplace. Despite my education and position in the company, I was not treated as colleague so much as a "mere employee." This company culture ironically stifles the kind of open discussion and learning required of an organization seeking to be on the cutting edge of a field. In my opinion, CS will probably find it hard to grown beyond its current size so long as Chavis holds a tight rein on his company. Prospective employees looking for growth potential should consider this as well.

      avatar
      Community Science Response
      12y
      Sorry that you feel this way. Working in the professional service industry is not for everyone. It is, as all the reviews point out, a very demanding job. In return for the hard work and exacting standards, we get to make a difference in communities across the country and provide above average benefits and salaries. We do a lot to mitigate the work-life imbalance that can inevitably be part of this work at times. For example, we provide two days telecommuting, flexible work schedules and a heavy emphasis on professional development of our staff. . Managers are under strict instructions never to tell anyone to work "off the clock" and all employees are required, by written policy to record all of their work time. These are written policies. Our commitment to our values when it comes to employees is exemplified in this situation by the extra assistance and severance we provided this individual. We care about the members of our community and I am very proud of that. None of our employees are "mere employees", we wouldn't be where we are without them. The billable hours system is standard in this industry and is a requirement of Federal contracts. If you are new to this time accounting system, it takes some adjustment. By all accounts of staff who come from other companies, especially large ones, our system is a lot less stressful. 50% or more of our company profits are returned directly to employees in terms of bonuses and profit sharing. We also contribute the maximum of 5% of our profits to charities each year. Having just celebrated our 17th anniversary, I would say that we are always working on improving, but we are managing the company very successfully . As other reviews state, we listen to our employees and have an open door policy. Promotions into management positions are common at Community Science with demonstrated ability and experience. I find no greater indicator of our success as seeing the professional growth of our staff. Advice to potential applicants: If you want to apply your knowledge and skills in a busy environment that works on several cutting edge social change issues while supporting your professional development, Community Science can be the right place for you if you have high standards, well organized, curious, eager to learn no matter where you are in your career, collaborative, and committed to progressive social change and being the best you can be, we like to hear from you.
      1.0
      30 Jan 2017

      Do not work here.

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Interesting projects, when project management and leadership issues don't get in the way.

      Cons

      The fact that the CEO of this company personally responds to each review on here with a paragraphs-long rebuttal of every criticism--often trying to guess who the reviewer is and calling them out individually--should tell you a lot about what it's like to work here.

      avatar
      Community Science Response
      9y
      I am sorry you have this perception of our operations and my responses. Glassdoor encourages employers to respond to all reviews. I follow their guidelines in my responses, including not identifying individuals. I use their guidelines as a check list. The large majority of reviews here are positive. We operate a transparent organization and would like prospective employees to have a balanced view of what it is like to work at Community Science. I may write a lot about Community Science because I am passionate about the work we do, the people who work here, and the type of organization we are becoming.We work very hard to be a better organization every day. I like sharing that.
      5.0
      18 Apr 2013

      A perfect match to my values and a great place to pursue my goals

      Managing associate
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      One of the major factors that attracted me to Community Science in the first place was the company’s commitment to build healthy, just and equitable communities and the company’s values and their approach to connecting research and practice. I was looking for a company that aligned with my values and my passion as well as a company where I could grow professionally. My two years of experience thus far with the company has proven that it is nothing but that (and so much more). The company’s leadership stays true to their values and approaches and takes on projects and contracts that align very well with the company’s goals and values. I really respect, value, and very much appreciate it because it is challenging to balance the passion and the business-side of things. Looking back at my experience with Community Science so far, there are reasons why the company has worked for me and hope that it will continuously do so. Here are some of those reasons: • Working on multiple projects that align very well with my passion. These projects may be similar or very different in the content areas, but the projects have a common theme – social justice and equity. It is tremendously exciting and inspiring to be working on projects that I am passionate about. • Working on multiple projects with opportunities to grow professionally. I work on multiple projects. And as I mentioned earlier, these projects may have a very different focus or may require very different set of technical skills. Working on multiple projects and playing various roles provide me with the opportunities to broaden my experience and develop my skills. • Supportive and friendly staff. Having a great support system among staff has been a huge plus working at Community Science. The staff respects each other and works very well together. If I have a lingering issue that I need to air out, I know I can talk to others about it and that they will problem solve with me or at the least listen to me. • Supportive and encouraging senior leadership. The senior leadership has a strong commitment to groom the junior staff professionally. In my two years at Community Science, I worked with several project directors that have very different skill sets, very different leadership and management styles, and very different communications styles. They have all been very supportive and have given me diverse roles and responsibilities so that I can grow in this field. • Competitive salary and benefits. Although the work inherently asks for long work hours, sometimes working into the evenings or over weekends, the company offers many ways to compensate for that. First, they offer two telecommuting days per week for their employees, which is a real perk. The hours are pretty flexible – for example, if you need to take care of personal business, visit the doctor, or others, as long as you are clear about when you will be available and not, the company is very understanding of that and tries to accommodate your needs. They also invest in your professional development – for example, the company will pay for travel and registration for you to attend a conference as part of your learning plan.

      Cons

      Although I really enjoy working at Community Science, there are two major issues that I struggle with. I recognize that some are things that come with the job and I need to work through it to be better at what I do. First of all, the work is very demanding. The work hours and workloads fluctuate from time to time, based on projects, and based on deadlines, but typically you’ll be working a lot more than 40 hours. This is inevitable because you are expected to meet your annual 90% billable percentage goal (this, by the way, was very confusing as a newbie and took a long time for me to figure out how this works). This means that you want to bill about 40 hours per week, which means that you will be working more than 40 hours per week (unless you are super productive and can work strictly on billable project tasks during your regular work hours). Working more than 40 hours a week means that you may be working some evenings and some weekends. This has worked for me so far, but I imagine that I would need to learn how to juggle between family demands and work demands in the future. And because of the billable percentage system we work under, it is challenging to allocate time to socialize with other staff (if you do, then it is taking away from their time as well as my own time, which means that we would have to work longer to compensate for the lost hours), catch up on readings for my projects (sometimes I feel the need to do some readings to get myself more comfortable with the project content area -- which are not always billable and this gets really challenging because I have to do this on top of the billable work), or complete tasks on my learning plan (as part of my professional development, I am required to develop a learning plan and implement it, but these, again, are hours that I have to work on top of the billable work). Because I have not worked at a company that uses a billable hours system other than Community Science, I do not know if these are issues that come with the job, or issues that are due to how the system is designed and implemented at Community Science. I try my best to meet what is expected of me but it is an ongoing question whether this type of lifestyle will be sustainable for me in the long-run. I know people that have successfully balanced their work and life in this field and at Community Science, so I am sure it can be done. At the same time though, I feel that it would be reassuring to know whether Community Science would be willing to embrace and work with the individual differences (such as different life situations or family demands) so that every staff has a chance to be successful in the field and in the company.

      avatar
      Community Science Response
      12y
      Thank you for your thoughtful comments and feedback. These are largely useful suggestions that we can implement, especially the phasing in of billable hour goals and the periodic discussion of billing and the financial management of the company. As no one has been penalized for being below their annual billable goal (i.e. something to try to attain) as long as they were otherwise productive (e.g. working on professional or business development), we need to do a better job of communicating that.
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      Glassdoor has 19 Community Science reviews submitted anonymously by Community Science employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Community Science is right for you.