DENVER — An outside firm is investigating workplace conditions within the Colorado Department of Human Services amid high turnover in its leadership team, a cascade of formal complaints and millions of dollars in settlements with departing staff.

The state in January contracted with Flynn Investigations Group, a Denver firm that specializes in probing workplace issues, to investigate complaints within the department, according to a copy of the agreement obtained through an open records request.

While the department declined to elaborate on the nature of the $25,000 investigation, a review of internal complaints and interviews with seven current and former agency leaders and workers paint a picture of a toxic work environment that impacted the mental health of its staff. Leadership was abusive, inappropriate and demeaning, employees told The Denver Post. Several high-ranking members of the agency left under strained circumstances, with the state paying them money to avoid litigation.

“Not only are they ruining people’s lives,” said one former employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they still work for the state, “they’re destroying the state’s second-largest agency.”

All told, the Department of Human Services has paid departing employees nearly $2.8 million in settlement agreements since 2019, when Gov. Jared Polis’ administration took the reins. These cases have concerned alleged pay, age, gender and disability discrimination, whistleblower protection violations, and retaliatory firings, among other accusations.

“That place is a trainwreck,” said Mark Schwane, an employment attorney who frequently represents state workers. “It’s a disaster.”

Department of Human Services officials declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to a list of questions from The Post. In a statement, a spokesperson said the department does not comment on personnel matters, including any investigations tied to individual employees. The external probe remains ongoing.

Employees have a variety of resources to address workplace concerns, including submitting grievances or complaints to leadership, requesting mediation or submitting discrimination or workplace violence reports, said Haysel Hernandez, a department spokesperson.

If an investigation finds that a staff member violated policies or the law, the department takes “immediate action to remedy the situation,” she said in the statement.

“The Colorado Department of Human Services strives to establish a respectful, healthy workplace where all employees are valued and treated fairly,” Hernandez said.

‘So many concerns’

The Colorado Department of Human Services is a sprawling state agency with more than 4,800 employees, trailing only the Department of Corrections in size.

It’s the department of “people who help people,” leadership says, responsible for providing services to children and families, the disabled, and older adults. The agency also manages the state’s child welfare system, 12 youth detention and commitment centers, and two state mental hospitals.

The department’s first stated value: people first. But individuals who worked there say the agency’s own staff don’t seem to get that same treatment.

Those who have been interviewed as part of the outside investigation told The Post that the questions have largely centered on one person: Katy Morrison, deputy executive director for operations and strategy.

Morrison referred to her leadership style as “slap and tickle,” which employees who spoke to The Post said made them uncomfortable. She also made inappropriate comments about people’s work statuses, staff said, reminding them that they could be fired at any time.

One staff member said Morrison told them they lacked “executive presence” and recommended they dress in such a way that required them to go beyond the organization’s official dress code. Others said the leader was known for making fun of others in team settings.

“She was very abusive as far as I’m concerned and used her power to intimidate people,” said the former employee who spoke of leadership ruining people’s lives.

Two former high-ranking department members specifically called out Morrison in internal complaints after leaving the agency.

AnneMarie Harper, the department’s former director of communications, cited “hostile and inequitable working conditions” that Morrison created and maintained “through a pattern of inconsistent expectations, inappropriate conduct and professional undermining and communication failures,” she wrote in an appeal and dispute form before the Colorado State Personnel Board, which was obtained by The Post.

Harper declined an interview request for this story.

In January, another top official filed a complaint with the department’s Civil Rights Unit, alleging Morrison and two other leaders forced her to retire by creating an “intimidating and psychologically harmful (workplace) such that it affected her physical well-being.”

Kristen Withrow, the former associate director for the Division of Youth Services, which operates the state’s juvenile commitment and detention facilities, said she was left out of meetings, publicly humiliated and scapegoated for safety issues that went on in the youth centers. Her treatment at the end of her tenure was so bad, she wrote, that she applied for family and medical leave for the first time in her 30-year career to care for her health.

“I have so many concerns in the last nine months,” Withrow wrote in a February email included in her complaint. “…I’m just so sad about all of this.”

Withrow declined to talk to The Post about her departure.

Employees say they chose to work for the Department of Human Services because they cared deeply about the agency’s mission to help those less fortunate. But the longer they worked there, the more they realized that their own mental health suffered as a result.

Multiple people told The Post that their sleep suffered while in the job. Others began going to therapy to deal with all the work stress. One former staffer said they burst into tears during a job interview when asked why they left the department.

“The values espoused and printed all over the place, we don’t seem to know how to live those out,” said a current employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they still work for the department.

While Morrison received the bulk of the attention from the outside investigators, many of the former staffers said her boss, Executive Director Michelle Barnes, also bore responsibility for the department’s toxic culture.

“If you’re not stopping it, you’re part of it,” the current employee said. “I think she is complicit. Katy can only do what she’s allowed to do.”

Barnes and Morrison, through a department spokesperson, declined interview requests for this story.

Millions in settlements

Barnes has also overseen the agency’s practice of paying out high-dollar settlements to departing staffers who challenged their terminations or brought claims in court or with the state personnel board.

The Post obtained all settlement agreements involving the Department of Human Services that concerned monetary payouts to employees since Polis took office in 2019. The department, during that span, reached financial agreements with at least 69 staffers, paying out a total of $2.8 million.

Those agreements spanned $500 on the low end to more than $400,000 to settle claims with a worker who filed a federal lawsuit.

In that 2020 suit, a psychologist working at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital at Fort Logan alleged that her supervisor demonstrated “abusive and authoritarian behavior” toward the female psychologists at the facility and used false claims to demote her and go after her professional license.

In a 2019 federal complaint, the director of nursing at a Wheat Ridge facility for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities said she was paid less than her white and non-Asian colleagues for the same work. The director, who is Asian, said leadership retaliated against her after she brought grievances over the discriminatory pay.

The Department of Human Services ended up paying her $383,750 to settle the nursing director’s claims.

Over the past two years, the department has reached 26 agreements with staffers to avoid litigation. Many did not involve money and only dealt with whether an employee’s departure was designated as a termination or resignation.

Fourteen of these deals, though, involved state payouts, to the tune of $381,900. Only the Colorado Department of Corrections paid out more money — $502,702 — to its workers during the last two years.

Harper received $95,000 to resolve her claims. Another worker got $26,500 after alleging their termination was discriminatory. A third person negotiated $122,000 after saying his separation was retaliation in violation of the Colorado Employee Protection Act. One staffer obtained nearly $40,000 to resolve civil rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges based on disability discrimination.

Some, though not all, agreements involved nondisparagement clauses, which prohibit the sides from making negative statements about each other. Several also included nondisclosure language, mandating that neither side discuss the settlement negotiations with a third party.

The Department of Human Services needs wholesale change at the top, said Schwane, the employment lawyer. The department rewards loyalty over quality of work, he said, which results in anyone giving negative feedback being pushed out.

“They’re reliable sychophants,” Schwane said.

Settlement agreements are used for a variety of reasons, and do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing by the department or employee, Hernandez, the agency spokesperson, said in a statement. These deals “ensure a fair process, and, when needed, a reasonable opportunity to resolve disagreements or provide a supportive transition out of the agency,” she said.

“The department continues to welcome feedback from staff and is committed to a positive, productive and successful workplace culture that helps employees conduct their best work,” Hernandez said.

Heather Wilcox, a 20-year state employee, said she was administratively discharged from her communications job with Colorado’s Division for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and DeafBlind — part of the Department of Human Services — after she took an extended leave following the deaths of both her parents and one grandparent.

Her supervisors questioned her about her leave and rejected her accommodation requests when she tried to return to work, she said in an interview.

Wilcox lost her hearing as a child and received cochlear implants — a fact that made her deaf but “not deaf enough” for some in the community, she said. A job helping Colorado’s deaf and hard-of-hearing was a dream come true. Until it wasn’t.

“The whole thing was horrifically abusive,” Wilcox said. “My own community did this to me.”

Wilcox lost health insurance for her and her daughter. She says she feels blackballed as she applies for other jobs.

She filed a claim with the state personnel board, alleging her discharge was discriminatory. In March, the state agreed to let her resign, removed disciplinary memos from her file, and paid her $40,000 plus attorney fees to avoid a protracted legal dispute.

Wilcox wonders how she became so disposable after spending her entire career in public service.

“How do you treat people like that at CDHS?” she said.

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