Pros
The heart of a good company is still here. There are a lot of talented employees who are great to work with and individual departments (to the extent that the manager has latitude over them) can be positive places to grow your career. Brand-new employees may also be happy if they’re a good fit with the new culture – that is, comfortable with a hierarchical leadership style and carrying out marching orders. If work is something where you're happy to just show up, put in your time, and stay out of larger strategic discussions, you'll probably be happy here.
Cons
New leadership uprooted key programs and cultural values to the detriment of the company. Questions weren't asked and time wasn't taken to understand the company, the industry it operates in, or the in-house knowledge of other employees. After an extreme amount of pushback (and a drop in eNPS of 52 points), the new CEO made it clear that anyone unhappy no longer had a place at PeopleKeep. Now left unchecked, management has become thin-skinned and mean-spirited. The approach to conflict resolution is to shut down discussion and exert authority. Extremely negative reactions are common when management is challenged and people who have different opinions are routinely uninvited or excluded from key meetings. Senior leadership exists in an intentionally built echo chamber. All new hires are treated to a smear campaign against former and long-serving employees, who are painted as inflexible and not interested in growth. They’ve been known to talk badly about other employees behind closed doors and post negative statements about them online. There's no willingness to believe that those who disagree with them may actually be arguing in good faith. What may be most concerning for PeopleKeep, though, is the brain drain that’s occurred since the management changes. More than a third of the company has left, taking vital industry and product knowledge with them. Senior leadership has very limited knowledge of the health benefits landscape and an even poorer understanding of how to build software. Struggles with reasonable expectations for the outsourced development team are common, and they routinely stumble over concepts and terminology key to the industry. Overall, PeopleKeep has gone from a company that prized intelligent colleagues engaging in informed discussion to a top-down operation that prizes easy acceptance. The results have already started to appear and they’re not good – crucial product features have malfunctioned and the top competitor has gained an edge that will be difficult to take back.
