The company I worked for before my department was sold was known for being generous with pay and reward & recognition, but when I joined I found whilst they really were good with pay the reward and Recognition side was awful. Then they stopped giving good pay. Here are some examples
1: I work for a phone and broadband company and we don't own networks, but have contracts with other network providers who sell access wholesale. We were moving from one to another in a mass migration and I was asked to lead a team to deal with fallout and identify issues. We were promised a reward for the work due to how hectic it'd be so I agreed. It was hectic. Found issues they hadn't considered and solutions to them. My team has a very positive attitude when things went bad and we did overtime to help fix them. The reward for the chaos? No reward…
2: After the migration team work was done covid was becoming a thing so they used the team to trial working from home. We were given computers and to test the software, vpn, etc This was just incase we had a lockdown, which of course we did. As employees went home we had to provide technical support to get them up and running. That's to several thousand people. To say it was chaotic would be an understatement. The reward? A £10 voucher to a store that was closed due to lockdown…
3: Our company didn't do just broadband and was sold to another. They had grand plans for broadband and the CEO visited us to share them. For the company we made alot of profit. Other areas due to regulations had to reinvest profits into initiatives, but our department didn't. A few months later we noticed that broadband was excluded from newsletters and when upper management did monthly streams about the future we were never mentioned. We carried on anyway launching new tech. My team even won a national award. Company was thrilled praised us for industry leading we were and how this was recognised nationally. They promised big rewards. The reward? They were already in the process of selling us to another company…
The funny thing is I saw it all happening. People would call me jaded or pessimistic. I knew the rewards would be non-existent or terrible. Even felt we would be sold. To be honest though I'm just along for the ride. Pay is fine and I like my work. My team is awesome and we have a trophy to prove it.