As a former IT employee of Great-West Financial (GWF) through 3 decades I have seen the cycles which are spiraling downward, especially since 2005. In the 90s GWF was a mid-sized company that was able to foster a great family (work/life balance) oriented environment. Originally conservative but balanced in their spending and technical advancement. Today GWF has become the typical large financial corporation where growth and profit are at all costs – especially to employees. In the 2000s new management (CIO) saw IT as a cost liability and reduced the IT budget year over year resulting in unreliable outdated systems and infrastructure. The results were frequent and significant outages. The dedicated, experienced and knowledgeable technical staff struggled to maintain service levels by committing their time and strong team ethics. Next cycle; triggered by a large acquisition/merger, was to replace the CIO (again) and spend millions of dollars to catch up technically. This was done with no additional staffing consideration. Time demands for the new systems, and technical nuances of significant upgrades caused another round of service levels issues, and management finger pointing impacted staff morale. Next cycle; replace AVPs with new management that determined the reason for system issues must be the “incompetency” of the technical staff. So, staff is driven out, or their positions “eliminated”. In one department, eight (of ten) staff gone, taking over 60 years of knowledge and experience. Newly hired directors hire former co-workers and friends for positions reporting to their direct reports (without interviews) who have no experience with a financial institution or the complexity of the technology employed. The amount of talent that has left GWF will clearly have a long term impact. Spending money to address all these issues, IT is once again facing budget concerns even as the company continues to push growth. When and what will the next inevitable cycle bring?
