Good Mission, Smart People — But Leadership Behavior Tells a Different Story - Anonymous employee Portland General Electric Employee Review

The gap between the culture this company says it has and the culture that actually exists within the HR leadership team specifically is significant and worth understanding before you join. I experienced and observed a management style within HR leadership that created an environment where people did not feel safe raise concerns or give honest feedback without fear of consequences. Performance concerns were routinely raised in vague and general terms without specific examples, making it hard to understand expectations or demonstrate improvement. When feedback was pressed for, little was forthcoming. There is a pattern of talented people being targeted or leaving voluntarily because of how they are treated by HR leadership rather than because of the quality of their work. The attrition is visible and the reasons are consistent among those who leave. I also want to flag something specific to anyone reading reviews on this platform: employees within HR were actively encouraged by HR leadership to submit positive Glassdoor reviews and were given scripts and talking points to share with colleagues to solicit additional positive reviews. This was framed as an initiative to improve scores rather than to genuinely address the underlying concerns driving negative feedback. I share this not to invalidate every positive review but to provide important context for how some of those reviews came to exist. Genuine culture improvement and manufactured perception are very different things, and candidates deserve to know the difference. HR as a function should model the culture it asks the rest of the organization to build.