Red Cross Employee Survey Finds Doubts About Leadership, Ethics

A new employee survey isn't good news for the American Red Cross. Just 39 percent of employees trust the senior leadership of the organization. And 4 out of 10 employees have doubts about the charity's commitment to ethical conduct.

The summary of the survey results obtained by NPR and ProPublica comes on the heels ofNPR's and ProPublica's reporting last month that the charity struggled to meet the basic needs of victims in recent storms and diverted needed resources for public relations purposes.

More than 14,000 Red Cross employees took part in the internal survey this past May. In anemail to employees in September, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern wrote, "Candidly, the results could have been stronger."

Red Cross spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis declined to comment other than to say this was the charity's first such survey and that it should not be used to criticize the organization.

"It is regrettable that you are taking work that we are doing to improve employee engagement and using it to criticize us," DeFrancis wrote in a statement.

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