Pros
Most staff are friendly and easy to work with.
Cons
My experience working at Vaughan Public Libraries has been disappointing and disheartening. What should have been an environment focused on learning, equity, and community service has instead become an example of how poor management, lack of accountability, and systemic neglect can destroy staff morale and trust.
There is a consistent and well-known imbalance in workload distribution across staff. Youth services employees are buried under multiple programs, projects, desk shifts, and outreach initiatives, while others in similar roles, are given little to no comparable responsibility. When concerns are raised about this, management’s responses are dismissive or entirely absent. The CEO consistently says that her door is open and accepts all feedback but only when it's compliments. It is clear that leadership rewards silence and punishes any critique or negative feedback.
Attempts to address these issues have been met with stonewalling, deflection, gaslighting, and manipulation. Emails and discussions about burnout, skipped breaks, and unrealistic expectations are ignored until the problem escalates to the point of illness. Staff who speak up are told to produce doctor’s notes, enter attendance programs, or look at the mental health videos and workshops available to “manage their stress better,” rather than having the actual causes of the stress investigated. It’s an insult to the professionalism of employees who are doing the work of multiple people simply because management refuses to act fairly or transparently.
The HR department as a whole is broken. Opportunities are mishandled, information is withheld, and decisions are made behind closed doors without consistency or proper communication. Employees are strung along with vague answers or bureaucratic excuses that only seem to benefit management when it suits them. It’s an environment where integrity is replaced by politics and where qualified, dedicated staff are treated as disposable. Being asked to interview for a position you have been doing for years is so ridiculous. You need to interview to go from full-time to part-time in the same role which is the biggest waste of time.
For an organization that claims to “inspire opportunities,” Vaughan Public Libraries has instead inspired exhaustion, distrust, and disengagement among many of its staff. The disconnect between the public image and internal reality is staggering. I'd like to know who was providing the information to win all these "Best place to work" awards? They forgot to ask the actual staff. Staff are passionate about their communities, but that passion is constantly undermined by leadership that refuses to listen, support, or lead with empathy.
Until VPL addresses the toxic culture of inequity, burnout, and mismanagement, it will continue to lose the trust of both staff and community members who expect better from a public institution. What could be a progressive, inclusive, and forward-thinking library system is instead mired in dysfunction and hypocrisy.
We are so severely understaffed, it is jarring. People are having vacations rejected because they can't find coverage. It is infuriating that this is the staff's problem. For a public facing job, all librarians are rewarded with work from home shifts while Information Assistants are in branch all day, dealing with the public and doing the actual work, delivering programs, engaging with the community and working alone in branch. If you have a public facing job, there is no reason for you to have a work from home shift!