-Worst safety culture and least safe facility I've ever endured. Senior management is comfortable with excessive levels of risk to all employees at the site. Middle and front-line managers have given up on the safety front for the most part. Front line employees are complacent because they know the investment required to make the site safe will never actually be deployed. I decided to look for another job when I had a very significant near miss and was treated like I was overexaggerating.
-Nonsensical budget that is religiously adhered to - private equity is driving this. Don't ever work for the Carlyle Group. This ties into the first point about safety.
-My peers and I were threatened by a member of senior leadership outside the site four times that if the site did not improve, they were going to replace every member on the SLT. Consequently, performance has not improved and 80-90% of the site's leadership has turned over.
-Catastrophic levels of turnover; leadership at the site and corporate think that this is fine. There are positions that haven't been filled for over a year - so that work is then delegated to those who remain. Engineers don't stay at the site more than two years, but this is seen as "normal". The quality lab has so much turnover that the site has shut down. The directive to the remaining staff in the lab was to simply "work harder."
-Immature and ego-driven senior leadership at corporate level. They attack people at the site for minor or non-existent offenses to said egos. They also talk down to managers at the site. They spend zero time learning the business or sites they govern. They don't bother to go into the field but then make comments about the site's performance.
-Horrible overall strategy at a corporate level; has the belief that hundreds of action items must be executed at the same time. Sets lofty goals that are unattainable just to blame site personnel when they aren't met.
-Although a few people are excellent at the site overall the culture is the most toxic I've endured in my career. The bottom 10% of the workforce is the worst performing I've ever seen and talks the most trash I've ever seen without getting fired for it. They relentlessly yell from the roof tops that the "place sucks." My message to them is as follows: It's time for some self-reflection. if the place is awful and you've been here for 30 years and most of the managers have been there for less than two you might be part of the problem rather than the solution.
-Massive drop-off in capital investment in conjunction with lofty goals above. No one wants to pay for anything because they don't want to get fired. The company is seeking to extract value today – regardless of its impact on employee morale and safety. Executives and directors think the issue is "lack of ownership" and they are right - but it's because they don't care to give anyone resources to improve the site.
-Toxic overall culture - site has a large cross section of low performers who do little to no work; office space style 30 bosses culture is in full swing. Those who do the least will complain the most about how you do your job. They will also gaslight you into thinking you are incompetent because you don't know something - but in reality they don't know either and are just going to saddle you with the real work.
-Many employees do literally nothing. Critical projects and initiatives go for months without progress, and no one is held to account. Some individuals are working around 6 hours a day while others virtually live at the site. It makes literally no sense. There are some abusers of the 9/80 schedule as well.
-0% raise due to Covid - yet all personnel were required to work throughout the pandemic. Leadership at the executive level does not believe in work from home. It was stated on earnings calls that people should be more worried about continuing to work for such a great company vs. care about raises.
-Those without oversight or accountability find ways to work from home despite the last point. Certain managers show up to the site very late and leave early. The inconsistency in policy adherence is maddening. It’s a very "do as I say, not as I do" culture.
-HR here is a disaster. People have gone for months without receiving correct pay - some have received no pay for a substantial amount of time already. They also produced a lot of W-2 errors and don't want to correct them for people. Some members of the HR team actively talk about not having empathy for people. Additionally, there are no longer exit interviews being conducted to anyone leaving. The overall strategy really seems centered around concealing problems from the highest rungs of the organization.
-Gaslighting – high level managers will try to act like individuals are the problem or being negative when it’s the overall culture and their lack of leadership that has made the environment insurmountably negative. The inner circle of leadership at the site also tries to revise history in front of the people who witnessed it. They also blame everyone but themselves for the current cultural predicament.
