- HR recruiting is horrible and doesn’t have a good reputation. They don’t follow up on internal applications, usually don’t care if they don’t communicate status, and are so completely overwhelmed with internal applicants at the moment that they’ve limited applications in internal positions to 3 in a rolling 30 day period. Either this means that departments are being laid off (which is happening) or people are so unhappy with their current situation that they’re looking for a way off their current team.
- They like to talk about respecting their employees, but it doesn’t show, especially in terms of recognizing the talent they have (see above). Internal candidates are treated like bottom feeders when applying to other roles, even when their performance has been amazing. I have colleagues who have applied internally to positions 20-50+ times without so much as a phone call, most are subjected to a boiler-plate e-mail - and these are leaders and mentors on their own teams! I have personally applied with a handful of screening calls, but no follow through happens after. If you didn’t get the point by now - if you’re looking for a job, great. But if you want to move around the company, good luck unless you know someone. It is next-to-impossible to gain traction in your career at current time. The only choice you have is to stay in your department until one leader leaves or retires. They tend to promote within, but only look at what you’re good at doing in your current role and not if you have the actual chops to manage people.
- Morale is low and the company is suffering from change fatigue. They’ll spout that they know people are tired of change, but look at re-orgs as a strategy and don’t acknowledge that it’s their lack of leadership, control over their subordinates, and lack of vision that has brought the company here. Lots of standard lines about how change is good and all that, but there is no stability and everyone knows it.
- Upper management doesn’t know the similarities/differences between lean and agile. Re-read that. It’s embarrassing. They had a huge investment in lean a few years ago and very few organizations even practice it anymore today. Us frontline folks went through all of this training and for what? This shows management’s utter lack of interest in learning how to make their operation better. They are simply going with the next hot thing and letting their arrogance get the best of them.
- They have and are continuing to lay off people in lots of different divisions in the company. The company is also planning yet another re-org, the impact of which isn’t even fully known yet, although I suspect many redundancies are there and more layoffs will happen. But hey, at least they are having town halls to discuss...
