I was motivated to post this after reading the latest all staff email from the CEO.
This workplace is culturally dysfunctional, as many places are. At Tides, unfortunately, the staff are in the process of trying to unionize the place. They are demanding fair pay, racial equity, diversity, and workload balance among other thing. Staff feel the need to protect themselves against the leaders and management because they simply are not listening to employee needs and haven't been for years. A few years back, the staff asked the leadership to take a look in the mirror – the leaders are all white and supposedly value equity and shared prosperity. Apparently they don't want to share the economic prosperity of executive pay with non-whites.
The Executive team has continued to get away with neglecting the employees and the culture to the point of staff wanting a union - so much so that as of late, a board member has come down from on high to interview staff to find out what's really been going on! Who knows what will be the result of this effort – hopefully some real change and accountability for those responsible for Tides environment.
About 4 or 5 levels down on the org chart is a Diversity Manager. What’s the point? HR people are no help and have no power or control over anything. They are just cogs in a wheel under the dictators.
The Netsuite implementation makes work streams less efficient for many people across different teams. No leader has been held responsible for this. One of the Directors and her staff work into the dead of night almost every night and on the weekends because NetSuite is a complete calamity.
Two COO types have come and gone.
The business development team keep selling services without real structure to support the clients. Handoffs to service lack process and structure and then the client just winds up leaving.
The clients are not nice – they yell at you and complain if they don’t get the service they were promised – I don’t blame them. The clients believe the entry level staff have the power to change it or make it better, but decision making authority is mostly hoarded at the highest levels.
Adequate staffing has been held at bay, necessary staff have been removed, inadequate infrastructure has existed for too long, and no real work is done to care for the staff. Incompetence and lack of experience on the leaders team and in management prevails.
Pay and promotions are reserved for a select few, especially if you are Caucasian. If you are looking to progress your career – go elsewhere. Professional development is almost non-existent. The managers received some coaching a while back. A few months back, staff were invited to “giving and receiving feedback" training. Even this latest training must not be working because staff want their union protection.
The bottom line is, hypocritical behaviors and outcomes persist with Tides mission and values as a cover.
