1. Micromanagement - every day is micromanaged to the utmost level it can possibly be. For starters you have to put in an End of Day report every single day, where it is required to put in something "useful and beneficial for the team". Great in theory, but when most days are similar to the previous day sometimes you don't have something to say.
2. Attendance Points - Attendance point systems never actually benefit anyone. They rolled this program out 3 years ago, and because it was never explained properly to people, a solid quarter of the sales team was let go due to points infractions by month 6. Points vary base on the day of the week, time of year and if you call in for the second part of your day, it will penalize you for the extra hour of optional work time that you have on your schedule, in the event that you can't get through your task list by then.
3. Staffing - They are always understaffed in every department because they can't retain employees. At the start of when I worked there, there was 16 sales people on staff. When I left, there were 6, with absolutely NO new hires for sales over the last 2 years. Things were bad enough this summer that they had to move techs to sales for our busy season for us to be able to keep up with the inbound calls.
4. Sales Management - I can't speak for other departments, as I only worked in sales, but sales management is a joke. In the time that I was at AHA, there were 5 different "sales managers", with the last manager being a 3 headed monster between the former head of QA, HR and honestly, I don't even know what the last one's role was before they stepped in to fill the gap left by the previous sales manager, who wasn't even the sales manager, she was managing a whole other department first, and then they threw sales on when the previous manager left.
5. AI - Let me preface this by saying AI can be a great tool. I used it for confirming what equipment was in customers home to ensure that we go them the best possible fit for their system. Upper management however is trying to go fully AI, and it shows. For starters the entire QA team was essentially displaced by AI for call reviews to make it so things are "less checking off boxes and providing a better customer experience". The problem with AI though, is that it is literally looking to check the boxes off to give you the points. I wouldn't be surprised as well if the project coordinator position is soon replaced by AI when customers call in, even though customers love the fact they can speak to a real person when they call. Training sessions are all done via AI now as well, so if the AI is wrong, guess what, you get fed the wrong information. Oh, and be sure to keep an eye out on reviews made by AI here, cause there's a number of them made here and posted.
6. Bonuses - I can't speak for every department as I don't know what their structure is like (or if they even get a bonus at this point in time), but for sales it is the most convoluted way to calculate bonuses out. Basically if we get more calls in over the course of the month, it is considering it as more opportunities. They adjust the bonus levels off of that information. I can honestly say that this summer and last summer, I had more volume in sales than I had any of the prior summers, and was paid less because of this, as less sales people means everyone gets more opportunities, and is a lower bonus payout level because of this.
7. Changes - Change is a fact of life that AHA loves to live by. There are daily or weekly rollouts for new changes or features that no one gives us a heads up on or asks for anyone's input on, they just roll it out. Likewise with the new sales presentation or changes to how bonuses are calculated. It's very much a "here is this, you will learn it and do it. You get a 2 month grace period before it starts affecting you. (Realistically though, it's a month and then they roll it out.) And when do they make these big changes and roll them out? During the winter when it's slow, and people can thoroughly practice and get things down for when busy season hits? Nope, it's rolled out a month before busy season, and the structure is so ridiculous there is 0 chance to get a score over 60 unless you do a 45 minute phone call with every single customer that calls in.
8. Scamming the System - Something that still boggles my mind is how much they allow certain members of the sales team to scam the system to avoid taking inbound calls. Essentially there is an inbound call waiting to be answered in the queue. Instead of answering this call, they will pause so they can't take any inbound calls, dial out, and unpause once the dialed out call starts ringing out, so that they don't have to answer the inbound call. Or they will dial out at the end of the voicemail, start that new call before hanging up the one they were on, again to avoid an inbound call. When brought up to management about this, it was brushed off multiple times over the 2 years that this behavior was reported.
I could honestly keep going about any of these topics, and more, but I think you all get the point.
