No growth, poor management, ZERO communication - Anonymous employee AES Corporation Employee Review

This company doesn't communicate, period. The Senior Leadership of the company makes decisions, and none of it flows down to the rest of the company. AES has zero efforts around external communication. Andres actually encouraged employees to write reviews on this website. I thought he was kidding at first. Nobody had any clue about what AES was for, or what they did, because they did not focus any efforts on their external comms. And when we did get press, often it was negative. And they wondered why the stock price sucked for years. Nobody knows anything about the company, and the company made no efforts to address that with an external comms strategy, or policy. I was there 4 years, and we had 3 reorganizations in that time. Total joke. The HR department is an absolute joke. There is no training, no efforts around career development, and little to nothing available to you if you wanted to seek these things out on your own. The worst part though - THEY THINK THEY'RE GOOD AT THIS. Which was ASTOUNDING to me. Andres and other senior leaders would constantly bring up "Talent Management", and the efforts AES was doing in this sphere - I never saw ANY of it. If people leave, you will get their work, and you won't be given a raise, or promoted. This is especially true with the more junior members of teams. This is a really unfortunate way to treat your employees. When people are given more responsibility, particularly when another team member departs, salaries, or at the very least, titles, should reflect those changes. This rarely ever happened. I knew someone in one group, which I will not name, that saw two coworkers come and go, and received all of their work without a promotion, or a raise. The corporate offices were remodeling to move to "open office space", and one of the floors was completed before I left. There isn't enough space in this review to describe how poorly managed this process was, from start to finish. The company had to participate in focus groups to identify "needs" as the space was reorganized and remodeled. The push was to be more "collaborative", but getting rid of offices, and moving to open space. People participated, and the majority spoke out against the switch, and yet, they pushed it on us anyway. They said it wasn't about hierarchy, or seniority, or about money, but it was, and it was so completely a farce throughout the whole process that it was impossible not to laugh at how clearly the Senior Leadership was lying to everyone else. It actually was about cost savings, and actually, not everyone was going to be in open space, because there actually would be offices, ESPECIALLY on the 11th floor, oh, and, by the way, NONE of the Senior Leadership would be sitting in open space. It was really disappointing. The IT group offers very little support, if any, and it's not their fault. The CIO, Elizabeth, is clueless on how to actually run IT and tech teams, and the entire department and their initiatives suffer because of it, particularly at the Corp headquarters. There were three guys in the the IT group that had to triage all the tech support, and they were so grossly understaffed, and under-equipped, I marveled at how they actually get anything done at all. The company operates as though it is losing money constantly, even though they are making revenue. Layoffs happened a lot because of this, and the company really suffered. Also, I saw several positions get laid off, that eventually had to be hired back on again. Which is just really poor management and organization. Recently, they adopted the mission "Improving lives by providing safe, reliable ad sustainable energy solutions in every market we serve". I can count on two hands the number of energy companies that have "safe, reliable and sustainable energy solutions" in their mission statements, or goals. COME ON. I refer you to prior statements - ZERO communication efforts or strategy. The Safety Culture at AES, is a cult at the Corporate Offices. We had to attend monthly "safety meetings", and listen to a power point presentation on the most ridiculous things. It was an insult that the company valued my time so little that they required a monthly safety meeting in a corporate office building in Arlington, VA. There are only so many times you can discuss speeding in the parking garage, and not texting and driving before you lose your mind. The company recently made the Washington Post top workplaces of 2014 list. In that write-up, the Post reported "To keep its workforce engaged and growing, AES invests significant time and resources into employee training and career assessment. Last year alone, AES conducted an average of 60 hours of training per person." This is a complete and utter falsehood. It does NOT invest time and resources into employee training and career assessment. They do not even have systems or processes in place to do this. Also, the 60 hours of "training" that they mention - is mandatory Safety training. It's not career training, or useful on the job skill training. I was embarrassed to see such a complete falsehood be printed in a paper of such repute. Andres should be more ethical and walk that statement back, because it isn't true.