Vantaggi
Pay for branch staff is decent for the field.
Some of the most amazing people work in the branches.
There's at least one branch manager who's trustworthy.
Svantaggi
The administration as a whole has decided that authoritarian rule is their policy in everything. Decisions with profound impacts on staff's job satisfaction, mental health, and sense of belonging are made without involving any staff below the management level in the conversations. The new regional model has been devastating to branch staff morale, but their concerns and suggestions are just brushed aside and they're told to just give it time. Any resistance to the regional model is seen as disloyalty to the grand vision. Things aren't much better at the branch manager level. With a couple of exceptions, branch managers seem to have been selected and retained based on their level of devotion to admin's plans, rather than on management skill, In my region, branch management is a terrible combination of ineffective and brutal. A staff member leaves their offices crying on average once a week. Like admin, they make decisions without consulting the staff affected and then push back--forcefully--when legitimate concerns are brought to them. They're resistant to ideas brought by staff yet hammer their own ideas into place no matter how nonsensical or challenging they are.