The quick recap: Lack of support, no growth opportunities, lack of communication between corporate headquarters and other lines of business, lack of communication with managers to direct reports, dissipating morale, poor work-life balance, lack of benefits that are legitimately helpful, no way to communicate or escalate concerns to anyone, poor compensation structure
The recruiters do a hard sell on bringing talent in as individual contributors versus salary, with a lot of exaggerated promises about bonuses, which continued to become impossible to obtain and were not close to the totals the recruiter promised. Their promises on ease of development or transferring to new roles were also not fulfilled. For example, I was told I was overqualified for my role but that once I reached my six months I would be eligible for a change and my direct supervisor would support that. When I went to apply internally I was told I could not apply without my supervisor's permission and when I asked her about it, I was informed she does not know anything about that process and there was no training for managers on how to develop or transfer employees outside of their departments. I went ahead and applied after our discussion. It took a total of three months and interviews with 13 different people before I ever heard back about the role and even then I had to follow up with one of the TA managers directly because they have no formal follow up process. With no feedback other than "we are in a hiring freeze" I joined the mentorship program. The first few months they could not find a match for me. When I finally did schedule my first meetings with my mentor, my direct supervisor made a big deal about saying I didn't need a mentor because it was taking away from my time I could be working on our case load. I was so uncomfortable trying to navigate my relationship with her in 1x1's about the subject that I eventually stopped scheduling frequent meetings with my mentor. Then the mass layoffs started in 2022. A large portion of managers and other CS team members were removed. We were already understaffed from the pandemic and drowning in work and had been in a hiring freeze. Now, we were all expected to cross train, have higher workload goals, and were told it would not merit an increase in pay or a title change. They offered absolutely nothing as a holiday bonus and our team's merit increases were only 1%-3%. Managers cut all team meetings back in length, stopped 1x1s, and basically the teams fell into chaos with no one checking in on everyone in a meaningful way, so there were relations issues and no control over the department at all. Morale spiraled out of control for the next year. When team members reported to their direct supervisors that the workload was too high and they had no support from their team members who were essentially cheating the system to improve their reportable KPI's, everyone was told their attitude was the issue and "maybe this isn't the job for you". Meanwhile, the company is reporting record breaking profits across LinkedIn and in the press, while their staff is picking up secondary jobs to support their families because they state their market analysis did not justify a wage increase. For a snapshot, the CEO makes more a month than my entire team does combined annually. Then their yearly recognition program is announced they can afford to take 100(mostly salary) employees on an international retreat for a week. No doubt these folks probably are exceptional at their jobs, but they also can afford to vacation on their current salary and aren't suffering from the increased workload or crushing recession. They also do great work but are not recognized for it. If you reached out to HR for support, they would forward your personal email to them to your supervisor instead of assisting with your concerns, which besides being a huge violation of privacy was just another kick to morale. WEX pushes on social media that they are big on culture, but they never delivered on half of their promises they promote and they do not provide a meaningful way to give feedback to anyone who can make a difference. Another example, they launched a inspire and celebrate rewards platform where you can give shout outs to team members who provide excellent training, team work, or customer service and you get points to spend. We had less than a year of this program before our department auto-denied all pointing and you'd end up with just enough points to never be able to spend them because you can't accumulate anymore. You get a "virtual" high five. Your employees want recognition for all their hard work and that should be reflected in their access to obtainable bonuses, programs that do what they promise, or in their paycheck. A virtual high five is not meaningful, it is more of a broken system where your team members feel disposable.
