FirstEnergy reviews

FirstEnergy's new CEO, Brian Tierney, has made it abundantly clear that employee trust, engagement, and evidence-based decision-making are not priorities under his leadership. Despite his own admission that remote work can be effective, Tierney continues to enforce a regressive return-to-office mandate under the justification that we "need 10 years of data" to prove remote work is viable. That’s not leadership, that’s intellectual laziness disguised as caution. Instead of empowering teams to deliver results in the ways that have proven effective over the past several years, Tierney is forcing everyone back into a dated office model despite widespread dissatisfaction, the proven success of remote teams in IT, and rising turnover across the company. His approach seems less about what works and more about what feels familiar to upper management. The result? Top talent is leaving. Morale is plummeting. And FirstEnergy is hemorrhaging credibility in an industry that desperately needs innovation, not nostalgia. Tierney may think he's bringing discipline and structure, but what he's really bringing is rigidity, stagnation, and a complete disconnect from the people doing the work.

In my opinion it seems Leadership is disconnected from the employees who are doing the day-to-day work. With continued layoffs, poor systems, hiring freezes, and unfilled roles, many employees are now doing the work of multiple people, leading to burnout and low morale. Pay is not competitive with the market, and internal systems often cause more delays and manual rework. Meanwhile, new executive roles have been added, and raises or bonuses for staff have been inconsistent or nonexistent. There are concerns about lack of diversity at leadership levels. In my experience, there was limited representation of people of color in leadership and low retention among minority employees. The recent return-to-office mandate is likely to worsen things.