Senior management frequently say one thing and do another.
Senior management shout at people in meetings, brush off legitimate concerns brought to them, and will not listen to problems. It feels like people with problems are the problem.
Values awards are performance only; from how company values are treated in meetings with senior management they are not 'lived' but 'decorative'. Delivering quickly is stressed in meetings with senior management, and in trying to hit those targets your quality is criticised. Try to introduce quality improvements and the time estimates are criticised, or they are deprioritised and never put on the roadmap. Frequently feels like there is no right answer.
Fast pace and rapid changes are because of constantly changing priorities and roadmaps. Teams can't guarantee what they'll be working on next, even if a project is being planned for. Appraisals are being graded on a curve where a certain percentage have to be pushed into 'under-performing' - so you're competing against your peers, and your performance last year, in order to get the discretionary bonus.
HL's staff survey is used to improve HL for staff; in FundsLibrary the delivery team were 'told off' for scoring the company low in some areas. Scores remained low in subsequent years. Senior management said after the last survey results they would decide whether the focus groups were actually right or not, underlining that they already think they know the answers and will not change their minds based on evidence.
People are worried about speaking their mind. Staff have been treated poorly by management for raising the wrong concerns, and have been told they are wrong to have those concerns.
Change has been managed poorly, especially communication, leading some people to question whether they were being made redundant. Teams are asked to devise process changes, then stepped over by senior management who announces half of the new process without hearing their advice - only to ask the team to fill in the blanks without contradicting the announcement. Development processes are cut off before new processes are devised, leaving some projects in limbo. The stated aim of process changes is not achieved and feels like a fig-leaf over change for change's sake.
Multiple long-term members of staff (10yrs+) have 'disappeared' suddenly overnight, without communication or notice, and without new positions to go to. This sort of change understandably causes concern as it undermines trust and job security across the business.
Objectives and goals, both personal and company-wide, since summer 2018 have been unclear or non-existent despite senior management working on them for six months. The parent company HL appear to be helping to solve that problem now though.
Parent company can make some changes frustratingly slow - signoff on new technology plans has taken far longer than expected.