Even the pope is a bad boss

A first-ever Vatican employee satisfaction survey reveals distrust of managers and a workplace lacking initiative and collaboration. Sound familiar?

ALAS, IT SEEMS the chief of your workplace could be the literal pope, and workplace grievances can still find you: a first-ever internal survey sought to probe the workplace morale of the employees of the Vatican (officially, the Associazione Dipendenti Laici Vaticani) and found that, like the average western marketing firm or corporate office, workplace morale is not so blessed.

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What is most surprising about the findings is really how normal they are: 75 per cent of staff claimed that staff are not appropriately placed, valued or motivated, and that their workplace does not reward initiative, merit or experience; more than half (56 per cent) said they witnessed workplace injustices; 26 per cent said they were afraid to speak out due to fear of management reprisal; and 79 per cent said that staff weren’t being adequately trained.

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The Vatican, in turn, responded in its own utterly predictable way — by dismissing the concerns as those of disgruntled employees. “It doesn’t seem to me that the discontent is widespread,” said Monsignor Marco Sprizzi, president of the Office of Labor of the Apostolic See. “There are no situations in which employees’ rights are not respected or are violated in any way.”

Perhaps the new boss — Pope Leo XIV — might be able to turn things around. The former Pope Francis, while generally well-regarded as a pope, was also trying to tackle the Vatican’s notoriously shaky finances (tackling financial troubles and grumpy employees are hardly mutually exclusive phenomena). But the whole survey may turn out to be a wake-up call for the Holy See.

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“We are like an orchestra in which each instrument must contribute to harmony,” said Sprizzi (holy corporate speak!). “The goal is for this dialogue is to be increasingly constructive and serene, rooted in the light of the Gospel and the social magisterium of the Church, in a spirit of ecclesial communion and effective respect for workers’ rights.” Kieran Delamont