I had worked at ICF for 4 years. After 2 years on the job, I was the most senior member of my department of 6+/- employees. Never once did my department ever promote an employee from within (new hires were brought in to take all senior positions). I never once received a promotion (I was promised a promotion through merit on 2 occasions) despite having the highest annual performance reviews in my department every year I was at ICF. My department seemed to have an aversion to promoting from within, for whatever reason (which was the reason 4 of the 5 other employees in my department departed). This caused great detriment to employee morale as long serving, highly effective employees who were passed over for promotions were expected to train outside hires to take senior positions.
Management was constantly restructuring department structure and implementing/eliminating policies and procedures to the point that no one knew what the current structure or policies & procedures were. The constant restructuring occurred literally at least once a year. After 3 1/2 years, structure and policies & procedures virtually returned to the way they had been before I started, which raises the question "why were they changed in the first place?"
In addition to the frenetic revamping that constantly went on, there seemed to be a culture of pettiness, dishonesty and "back-stabbing" within the management team of my department. I often thought "if management devoted half of the time towards implementing effective structure and policies & procedures that they do to petty squables and trying to one-up each other, the work environment would be bordering on ideal."
Also, one minor thing that always bothered me was that ICF makes employees pay for parking in the parking garage that is part of ICF's leased space in Fairfax, VA (there are no other alternatives for parking at this location) and is solely reserved for ICF employees (with the exception of visitor spaces on the lower level). The collection of fees for parking might not be so aggravating, except that ICF then uses those fees to pay subsidies and rewards to employees who take mass transit (which is not an option for most people at ICF, especially for people in my department who are required to work long and varied hours).
