Upper Management treats Operations like content robots to make up for their bad product. C-level folks will tone check their employees for asking questions about their uncertain futures with the company, despite parading around the idea of company-wide transparency. It's a big smoke a mirrors act that is finally catching up to the company at large.
Operations is also never in the know about things being sold to clients, and is always playing catch up. Leaves for a poor employee experience, as well as a poor client experience. No wonder clients seemed to be leaving en mass. The pay is also a joke, as it's clear they are in such dire straights financially.
It all adds up, when you put it all together: clients are leaving due to a bad product, and poor experiences due to a lack of communication, collaboration, and managerial support between Sales/Solutions Consulting and Operations. There is no cash flow, so the company resorts to laying off employees and handing off their responsibilities to the employees left. Those remaining employees then become so overworked, they end up leaving. Which now leaves an opening to either bring someone in who needs to perform 3+ jobs for said position, or the company decides backfilling the role is not necessary and hands off the workload to the remaining overworked employees who had already taken on extra work from previous rounds of layoffs.
It's a vicious cycle and no one at the C-level is willing to hear and digest any feedback on the employee experience. Anything remotely negative said is viewed as being rude and, in the past, has resulted in a company-wide muting from Zoom meetings on the questions front. They also believe that anonymous feedback emboldens their employees to be negative and rude, which is simply not true. C-level does not understand that they do not provide an environment where all types of feedback are welcomed.
Anonymous feedback isn't emboldening your employees to act out of turn, it's protecting them from retaliation in an upcoming layoff. They want to see C-level can practice the same accountability they preach to the rest of the company. They want to see their jobs are no longer in jeopardy on a weekly basis. This is something that the C-level members need to understand. YOU are the example. YOU are in control of people's livelihoods in an uncertain economy. YOU do not get to comment on your employees need for money to exist in the world. YOU are the ones who should be providing positive change to the company. They don't all have the luxury of working for numerous companies in addition to yours as advisors.
