I worked at Kalderos prior to the current leadership team's arrival. Our previous ELT was a pleasure to work with and ensured that employees' voices were heard. There were some things they didn't do well, but they expected us to assume the best of one another. As a result, the company's culture was warm, trusting and inviting. Below are some bulleted highlights of what transpired after the current ELT's arrival.
• Sense of distrust
• Expectation of after-hours work
• Lack of industry knowledge
• Nepotism
• Rude behavior
• Hiring of inept friends/former colleagues
Details below.
- When they first arrived, there were no introductions scheduled for existing employees, resulting in missed opportunities to 1.) gather valuable feedback from those with experience in the industry and 2.) answer questions amidst a huge shift in the company.
- Most days were full-out fire drills due to rapid customer churn and leadership's lack of insight into ongoing customer issues which, at the onset, was something they unfortunately inherited. However, heated arguments and disrespectful behavior were suddenly on full display by members of leadership, causing discomfort for tenured employees also on these call(s).
- They have limited understanding of how to interpret metrics relevant to their internal objectives. Instead, they're content with allowing outdated metrics to be published on their products' sites, mostly ballparked #s.
- Without a proper understanding of their data, they propose internal initiatives blindly and are then surprised when post-launch results are unfavorable. Then they start playing the blame game which can quickly turn into a witch hunt.
- Customer-facing products are outdated and data is messy, mostly due to a total disregard for alpha testing. Instead of applying needed updates to fix existing product issues, leadership was content to create a brand-new customer product on top of the existing and outdated product, forcing customers to log into both platforms to gather/aggregate their messy performance metrics.
- ~90% of the time, customers were the ones to recognize and point out data discrepancies in the products due to lack of internal QA and pre-release testing.
- If a member of leadership is trying to reach an individual and that person is in a meeting, it seems to be a mandatory expectation that the person pause the meeting to take ELT's call (usually via an unexpected mobile phone call). This occurred quite often and usually stemmed from their recent revelation of a customer's renewed dissatisfaction. As a result, we had to schedule a follow-up meeting to finish the conversation, initially scheduled, due to ELT's interruption.
- We went from a customer portfolio of 50+ down to ~30 within the first 2 years of their management.
- Their team seems to be ignorant to what's happening/not happening within the company. Even if you do voice concerns regarding areas needing improvement within a team or department, they act interested, even alarmed in the moment, but then take no steps to address/fix the situation.
- They hire previous fellow colleagues/friends who are incapable of the responsibilities their roles require.
- These hired friends seem to be the ones receiving regular promotions and/or internal recognition, mostly due to pre-hire off-the-book agreements for advancement opportunities. Many have no technical capabilities despite the job description's requirement of tech competency, meaning others with these skills need to pause their work to explain simple technical concepts. These individuals kiss leadership's behinds once they've landed the role and then complain when those they supervise don't trust them to be authentic leaders.
- They provide internships to their children who are the only ones to move into permanent roles within the company while the rest of the interns are offboarded.
- Employee surveys are distributed company-wide for anonymous feedback, yet due to the volume and frequency of lay-offs, most employees are distrustful of the process and avoid providing candid feedback due to fears of being let go.
- I've seen new hires let go after just four months of tenure simply because leadership approved creation of a role that was not needed. I saw one individual receive a well-deserved promotion to a new team but the next week was let go along with the rest of the team she'd just joined. Rounds of lay-offs happen often due to this issue and there is no empathy or explanation from leadership or HR in these instances - the employees' accounts are simply deactivated and you discover the unfortunate news when you attempt to reach out to them internally. Their role then vanishes, only to be replaced with a similar role, worded differently, for which the company is now hiring.
- Leadership sets the tone that it's ok to put others down and that doing so will help you stay relevant and maintain job security.
In summary, do yourself a favor and ask others in the 340B industry about Kalderos before applying - they're the laughingstock of the industry and they, as well as current and former customers, seem to know it. I've never witnessed a company's leadership team get away with the things this group is getting away with, and I'd be shocked if they're still in business two years from now. I urge the board, before it's too late, to facilitate the employee survey process and compile feedback instead of ELT-controlled HR.