I am a manager at a large-ish, international company. I have been there less than a year and just went through one of the worst chain of events I have ever seen unravel. I am horrified and disgusted.
Let me start my saying that I took the job to sharpen up some project management skills and move into another part of the company. Quickly upon being hired I found out that the projects I was supposed to be leading or working on were being pushed back. The role wasn't really in my wheelhouse, but I put my head down and dug in to try and learn the parts of the business and be as effective as possible – I wanted to be more than just a mouthpiece and have an idea what the people I was managing we doing. I spent time shadowing with supervisors and front-line people, alike. I did learn some things, but when it is not your active role I find it hard to becoming truly proficient so fast.
Fast forward a few months and I have very little support, we are failing service level and everyone is running around like the place is on fire. I have been doing this a long time and thrive in chaos and ambiguity, but couldn't get anyone to get their shit together long enough to explain why there was so much panic. Holidays passed and the busy season died down and we began work on EoY reviews. Standard stuff I had done many times in the past. I gather my info, provide my feedback and keep it moving. I present the data as outlined to all parties. I take over the frontline reviews, so that I can get more facetime with them and get a hang of the process. I begin telling people that merit increases will be available and that the company wants to reward them for their hard work. We set dates to follow up and when those increases go into effect.
The follow up date comes and goes with no updates. Further meetings reveal we will have to push back the increase date. No ETA and only allowed to provide limited information to my people. Okay. Sure. -this is fine meme- The date gets pushed back and is now on hold. We just wrapped up what they call Culture Week, which is where they take customer service appreciation and turn it into a time when CEOs can spew even more ludicrous nonsense and give a spotlight to people making boatloads of money who seemingly have no self-awareness. One of the things they said over and over was “people over profits”.
I go through budget planning and even if I max out my budget I would have a surplus of more than 40% – that's a lot. I submit my budget, my boss approves and sends it on up. I have no learned that there may not be any merit increases that the budget planning was useless. I am also alerted that we will undergo a Workforce Reduction. They used performance as the business justification, but in reality they let some people slide as long as they had taken on additional job responsibilities that came with no raise. So, basically, if you could do more work than someone else… you were safe. I had some concerns, so I did what I thought a good leader should do and I reached out to the people above me to get a better understanding.
I am told that for everyone one employee in the US we can get 6-8 of them overseas. I had noticed that none of the people who left were being backfilled, but that overseas workers constantly had training classes going. I didn't think much of it, they might be opening a new center or launching something – it wasn't something I was directly involved with. Turns out, we just didn't want to spend the money. So much for people over profit. Knowing this detail made my stomach churn. My peer has been with the company for more than two decades and we have shrunk so much that I am not sure if I will even be needed any more.
I get an email from HR telling me that some of my frontline folks would be let go in this WFR. I had the details, but was not allowed to alert them. I was told to schedule meetings the day they were to take place and not send them any document related to it until they had joined the meeting. People were understandably shaken by this news and if they still had vacation time left… we let them take the rest of the day. They are not paid out for any unused vacation time, btw. There is an option for a bit of severance pay, but it requires they stay for another week and work their shifts, as well as sign and return a document. They were sent a packet about UE benefits and told how to enroll in COBRA.
I have seen downsizing and site closings before, but this was wild! After we told these people this we then had to have a meeting with the rest of the people to let them know what was going on. Fed them a bunch of bullshit that we were told to cover and call it a day. I am astounded by this entire process and how poorly it was communicated and rolled out. There has been very little transparency and a whole bunch of corporate speak that even I cannot translate.
To make this worse, though, the day before we have these meetings and the day we get all of the documents that will be delivered to them my boss decides to host a leadership “happy hour”. We are encouraged to drink alcohol (we are all remote) and share what we are drinking. Wines, whiskeys, beers and even some vodka was represented. They sat around chatting and drinking more almost two hours during the work day. There are people who need help and support and the leadership group is hyucking it up with the only request to “not get too shitfaced”. There were warning signs before, but this seem borderline insane to me.
As the person with the least tenure and the fewest relationships I am not comfortable engaging HR. HR has essentially been a bunch of puppets for anyone in upper-management, simply taking requests and making it fit. Not to mention with my boss being with the company for almost three decades I am sure she has some long time friends over there. I have this job because I need money, not because I want to be part of this. I have been looking for work for months without luck. I feel like my days are numbered and as many more days as I can get paid for the better.
My wife thinks I am just being kept around to finish out theses terms and will then also be let go. I really feel awful having to see all of this stuff. I got into this because I wanted to be the person that I never had when I was in these roles 15 years ago or so. I worked really hard to climb up here and take pride in my people management skills and how much I genuinely want to help these folks.
Oh, and one finally. I forgot and I am too lazy to figure out where it goes now. I mentioned to my boss and my peer that I had offered to help with resumes and be a reference and was told “no, we don't do that”. They said that within the packets they have someone who can help with resumes and that we CANNOT be a reference for someone. I asked why and if there were any legal documents, because as far as I understand I can absolutely be a personal reference for anyone – I understand that wage and employment verification go through another hotline.
Not sure if this is the place for this, but it felt like it might fit in with the rest of the god-awful stuff businesses do to folks that gets discussed around here.