A few months ago, our Board of Directors sold the company out by allowing a third party company take over daily management. All employees were retained and pay stayed the same, but benefits were cut. Insurance doubled but provided better coverage (if you actually use it); vacation time rolled over but with a 6-month vesting before you can cash it out if you leave; 401k matching was cut in half. Inflation has spiked, but none of us have seen more than a 3% raise in almost a year. I actually make slightly less now than I did when I started thanks to inflation.
The new company is a dumpster fire managerially. Their payroll system sucks, and the onboarding was a nightmare. Someone also told me today that our 401k is being deducted from our pay, but it hasn't been deposited into our accounts for a month and a half now, so none of those contributions are earning anything. Nobody knows why or isn't saying.
Their HR department is a joke and multiple time zones behind. I mean, ours was pretty much garbage anyway (and they're still with us unfortunately), but at least they had a free hand to operate. Now, they're beholden to whatever corporate HR does (or more accurately, doesn't) act on, and decisions that need to be made are getting ignored….or they're not doing anything and blaming corporate.
We were already short staffed from the 'Rona, and we held off hiring because this company was coming in, so we were already paralyzed for about 3 months. Now, they're hiring office goons at higher pay than the retained staff are earning, and they're not hiring any labor for our service and operations departments. In fact, they've been outsourcing a couple areas to 3PVs at a higher rate than what they're offering to hire directly.
People are stressed and overwhelmed, and a handful of people have already quit. One department that was a third short from the pandemic will now lose another third to better paying offers and unwillingness to support staff. The rest are disgruntled, looking for exits or retirement, and a increasingly scared they won't be able to meet client obligations. Another has lost between a third and a half of its people because they're making 40-50 hours of overtime a week just to keep all their balls in the air. They're also having to hire extra labor to cover everything. A third department will quit en masse if their manager leaves, which may happen this month. I, myself, have been operating largely on my own for about 8-10 months, and the pressure is getting to me: fatigue, sleeplessness, irritability, and pervasive thoughts. I get irrationally angry every time my work email chimes, and I've intentionally turned it off after I leave.
Many of us retained folks are theorizing that they want to force us to quit so they can hire new, younger people, but the literal decades of lost accumulated knowledge- let alone the number of bodies who do the work that makes the place run- would cripple them for months if not years, and we don't understand why they won't just pay us more. We like where we work and want it to succeed, but executive and corporate are doing nothing to support us in that goal. They do pointless appreciation things but they won't give us what we want: more money, extra staff to lighten the load, and a chance to use our vacation before it expires at the end of the year.
I know. I need to find a new job and quit this place, but it's hard, because I like the people and my work, most days. And, I'm sure they'd come back with a counter if I had an offer. But, damn if the company doesn't exasperate the hell out of me.
I kind of want to try telling them I have an offer for, like $20k/yr more just to see if they'd shit kittens, but I don't know if they'd go that high….. All I know for sure right now is that I'm tired of being angry at the lack of support we're enduring; I'm tired of waking up dreading getting out of bed in the mornings; and I'm tired of being told were doing great things but reaping no rewards for our efforts. It's demoralizing.
I don't really have an ending to this, just venting my feelings…