Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill is being accused of presiding of a “toxic work environment” throughout the course of his tenure running the organization, according to former and current employees who spoke with The Athetlic’s Kalyn Kahler.
Former COO Ron Miner told Bidwell in 2019 that a “majority” of Cardinals employees were “working in fear” due to the workplace conditions created by his favor, which have been described as him being a micromanager who yells at employees over minor transgressions and having workers feel like they are “walking on eggshells”
“You would think being an entertainment sports team that it would be a fun place to work. No, not at all,” one employee said.
Some of the minor infractions included Bidwill expressing “frustration over the area code of an employee’s cell phone and yelling at an employee who turned off the office’s fluorescent lighting in favor of softer light.”
“People just didn’t say anything. They complain under their breath, and they go into their car at lunch and they cry,” an employee said.
In addition to these issues, the organization did not have a human resource director from 2008 to 2021, which only further created a more toxic environment. In 2019, the Cardinals sent out an employee survey and feedback on Bidwill was horrible but the team didn’t make the necessary changes to fix the work environment.
One employee said the survey “disappeared into thin air,” and former team executive Terry McDonough accused Bidwill of burying its results in a lawsuit.
The Cardinals released this statement to The Athletic, saying the results of the employee survey was taken into account despite the results not being available to employees:
“The 2019 survey was not ignored. In fact, significant action was taken based on its feedback, the most prominent of which was the creation of the Chief People Officer role,” the team said. “Some changes were immediate, like the employee wellness initiatives announced in February of 2020, just weeks before COVID shut down the country. Others took longer as a result of the pandemic.”
Bidwill also responded to allegations made by employees, saying he has “room to grow” and he’s working on being a better leader.
“As I have said personally to every member of the Cardinals organization, I certainly have room to grow and with the benefit of hindsight, would have done some things differently over the years,” Bidwill said. “I also know that my direct approach doesn’t always land well, and I’m working on that. I have always been driven by the desire to learn and improve and more importantly, to use those lessons in building the best organization possible. Over the last several years, we have taken significant steps to improve our culture and build a stronger community. We are a better and more inclusive organization today than we were yesterday and I’m extremely excited about what we can be tomorrow.”
The report also accuses the team of a more serious accusation regarding the behavior of female employees, including how they dress and not allowing them to speak to players and coaches, even if the conversation was initiated by the players or coaches.
“It felt like I was walking on eggshells,” one former employee said. “Am I okay to be here? Oh my God, what if someone sees me here? You’re just doing your job and trying to walk around the building in which you work and feeling like, ‘Oh, I can’t be on this side.'”
The team denied there was ever an official policy in place restricting the behavior of female employees.
Now all eyes will shift to the National Football League and see if they will further continue this investigation or bring down punishment on Bidwill and the Cardinals.
