The company has an internal identity that is completely at odds with the actual working experience. HR and C-Suite level team members talk all the time about the great culture and how cool it is to work there, but the culture is very condescending, mainly held as a standard for front line and hourly employees while salaried and senior leaders are not held equally accountable and are not well versed in the culture themselves. The culture on paper looks good at first glance, but upon a little closer observation, you realize it's just leftovers from the days when the company operated the hotel, and most leaders couldn't tell you the Vision Statement if their life depended on it, let alone the other components of the aspirational, cartoony fluff being passed off as core to the company's values.
Speaking of Salaried and Hourly Employees... the pay is good if you are an exempt team member, but if you are hourly you have to fight for every cent you have. There is no consistent policy for team outings (birthday lunches- am I expected to participate as a volunteer or stay on the clock?), and in general the pay is less than what you can make elsewhere in Nashville. There are lots of leaders that are holdovers from the Gaylord days, and many of them have risen to a level in the organization that is completely beyond their capabilities and skillsets. As a result, many of these mid- to high level leaders work constantly (several of my leaders have sent me emails at 3am and no, they aren't working the entertainment shows on these nights) in order to try to outpace their inadequacy and inability to delegate properly. There is a culture that you have to give everything to work, which would be one thing if people worked well together. On the contrary, the organization is extremely disconnected, with each team operating as its own silo, and communication is abysmal, with lots of duplicate work because the culture does not encourage sharing of resources and knowledge.
There is no regular feedback process for team members to go through to voice concerns and frustrations other than going directly to HR, who rarely make an effort to correct the situation. The only real time an employee can voluntarily voice feedback is when leaving the company, and then the HR team discounts the perspectives as disgruntled employees. When feedback is done, it is in the form of handpicking team members to talk to the CEO so that he gets a very sanitized view of the perception within the organization.
Voluntary development tools are also lacking; leaders are expected to attend mandatory training periodically, but there is no accountability if a leader decides not to participate. They only offer tuition reimbursement on college degree programs, so if you want to get a certificate or other training that would positively impact your abilities in your role, it is dependent on if your leader is willing to part with a few dollars from their budget (precious few leaders see the value in this).
Most disturbing is the fact that all the C-suite leaders have surrounded themselves with yes men. Anytime an executive changes direction or priority, the whole team is expected to jump up and immediately get to work on the passion project du jour. The leaders can get ugly and aggressive in meetings and lash out at team members, but there is no culture of open dialogue and feedback, so rather than having a heated but open conversation on the goals and direction of strategy, mid-level leaders kowtow to this behavior, come back to their teams, and have truly unreasonable expectations for the team members to then meet these new deadlines and project achievements. There is no solid priority set for the future, so the minute a C-suite leader makes an offhanded comment about one area, everyone jumps to make a difference in that business area (think of rats skittering from side to side on a ship). This means that when new leadership is brought in, the selection process is very short sited or expectations are grandiose (we've had 3 new CMOs in 2 years, and multiple people are starting to count on 2 hands the number of bosses they've reported to in the same time period). Some leaders overstep their bounds to assert their dominance on areas of the business they shouldn't be involved in; meanwhile, other leaders don't hold their team accountable.
