Culture has been declining for the last several years. I don’t believe, as many others do, that it is due to so much churn among senior leadership.
Rather, the company has grown to the point that the whole “we’re a family, you can pull a leader out of a meeting at any time and anyone can approach anyone with a concern” simply doesn’t work anymore. That said, the company refuses to admit they’ve gone “corporate,” and the way that team members are treated goes contrary to what is preached.
Leadership is not approachable. Legal and HR concerns are dismissed (and the highly touted ethics hotline routes to…you guessed it - legal and HR. The fox is guarding the henhouse. In addition, the new “CHRO” has never led HR for any company, let alone one with 750 employees). Policy (if it exists at all) is not applied evenly - one person will get fired while another will have no consequences. Only certain employees are allowed to work fully remote, but there’s no rhyme or reason, and the company recently hired 8 fully remote (white male) employees.
Pay for professional positions is significantly below market rate, particularly if an employee was promoted. Raises above a certain amount (even for promotions) need the highest level of leadership to approve, and a supervisor will rarely go through that effort. The overall attitude is “like it or lump it.” Because many longtime employees truly love their jobs and coworkers, many accept not being paid what they’re worth. Pay bands for positions are secret, so there is SIGNIFICANT pay disparity among comparably-tenured team members with the same title. Tenured employees are leaving in droves while new employees are hired at a higher rate of compensation. The result? Brain drain - those that have worked for years on forging relationships with dealers or have all the “tribal knowledge” are gone on to positions that pay what they are worth, and well-compensated newbies that struggle to acclimate. This leads to even more churn and so SO many lost dollars that could have been saved by paying people what they are worth.
