The senior leadership is chosen based on their perceived loyalty and alignment with the executive leadership ideals. The present senior leadership has little direct experience in dealing with people and have minimal if any, supervisory experience.
Supervisors are told what ratings they are to give the underlings for performance appraisals and it weights most heavily on the arbitrary criteria of “behaviors” as measured against the executive leadership values. Knowledge skills, work output, customer service and working with peers is secondary.
The president wants to change the culture of the company and one aspect is to hold people more accountable. While the goal is good, the senior leadership in their zeal and focus on pleasing the president, takes this to extreme and thus employees are evaluated mostly on how well they are conforming to the values and behavior tenants.
When employees raise valid issues the employee is considered oppositional, defensive and quickly labeled non- conforming and the senior leadership quickly pounces on their supervisor. And the supervisor is given a poor evaluation for not keeping the employee in line. In other word, the senior leadership is fanatical in insuring that the executives do not perceive them as not being able to follow the executive behaviors expected. It is a very contentious and adversarial atmosphere.
An one gains some time with the company, they need to consider their ideals and beliefs especially if one has aspirations of becoming a supervisor. If you have principals and you are not willing to put them aside in order to climb the corporate ladder, PPL Electric Utility is not the company for you.
