Jul 2, 2019
Slalom Response
6yThis is John Tobin. I will share with the NY leadership team and I would hope that people would feel free to talk their people manager and GM about these types of things which they be experiencing. I'd be happy to talk to you more about this if you would like - simply email me at johnt@slalom.com to set up a time to speak. Alternatively, if you’d like to share more feedback anonymously, please consider doing so via this survey: http://slalom.ws/anonsurvey.
***Response from GM of Slalom New York
This is Chris McGrath, General Manager for the New York market. I’m sorry your experience with Slalom NY did not meet your expectations and I would love to talk to you more about this if you would like - just email me at chris.mcgrath@slalom.com to set up a time to speak. I always welcome the opportunity to listen to the needs and concerns of our people to learn where we can improve. Regarding the two ‘bullying’ incidents you’ve cited, I truly believe we took the action we needed to take in order to support all of our people, and that we ultimately reached successful outcomes. Unfortunately, our commitment to due diligence and fairness means that resolutions are rarely as swift as some may prefer. However, I believe that taking the time to thoroughly understand each unique situation we face enables us to stay true to our core value of doing what is right, always. We also believe heavily in providing coaching to our team members to help them improve, and sometimes that doesn’t always work. Additionally, our commitment to protecting confidentiality means that those not directly impacted are not always privy to the details of the outcome. I understand how this can contribute to the office ‘telephone game’ but, for better or worse, that will not change our commitment to respecting confidentiality. Regarding funding for professional development, I’m not aware of any circumstances in which a request was arbitrarily denied – however, we do consider cost and business relevance in our approval process. The only requests I have ever denied have been because the training did not further the person’s career at Slalom or our business which I think is a legitimate expectation for funding. If anyone ever feels as though their development is not being adequately supported, I strongly encourage them to reach out to me or one of our Managing Directors directly. I agree with your comment about promotions seeming to be opaque, and increasing the transparency and clarity of our promotion process is an initiative that is currently underway, represented by a project team comprised of a diverse mix of Slalom NY team members, across all practices and levels. We hope to have this process in place for our next round of promotions. I will disagree with your point that there is a “boys club” which results in certain individuals being paid more and promoted faster. No such club exists. People are evaluated on their contributions, and you may not agree with the outcomes but I believe people are treated fairly based on the actual data. We put a great deal of energy into ensuring our compensation structures and processes are equitable and I’m proud of our results in this space. I’m also extremely proud of every single one of our team members who has successfully transitioned into a new role and I don’t wish to downplay their achievements – the all earned those promotions. While I believe we have made and are still making strides in each of these areas, I know we are not perfect and hearing feedback directly from our team members helps inform where we might still have work to do. I welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with anyone who’d like to provide feedback and/or hear more about our continued improvement efforts, and strongly encourage anyone interested to reach out to me directly. However, if you’d like to share additional feedback anonymously, please consider doing so via this survey: http://slalom.ws/anonsurvey.
