#trust

The days of mutual respect and loyalty between management and staff at IBM are long past. IBM’s one-time core principle of trust and personal responsibility in all relationships no longer applies to its executive ranks (nor do the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines.) Don’t overly invest in your career because it’s guaranteed that your employer at most makes extremely short-term investments in you.

Know that your 1st or 2nd line manager may have been coerced to sign a justification for laying you off written by higher ups and certify it as their own assessment. The documented decision making process and paper trail scrupulously follow the law. The actual decision process is a different matter. IBM’s no longer squeaky clean in this century; it just presents the outward appearance of being so.

In IBM even band 10 and band D employees are disposable interchangeable parts now. The situation has become similar at other major tech employers. Show your next employer no more loyalty than they show you. Beware of loyalty to your local team. Big businesses get a free piggyback ride from that loyalty to your local team. They count on it!

Even if you’re the best in your country or geo, they can always find 2 or 3 lesser talents in a far cheaper developing country to replace you. They won’t think twice before doing so … even to someone who walks on water.

This. OP: @ce+1k9hfmk62

More people gone. Good people — who gave a lot and deserved better. And the message to the rest of us? “Stay positive. Be agile. ”I’m tired of hearing that. This doesn’t feel normal to feel trust being chipped away and a culture that doesn’t feel the same anymore.

We’re supposed to smile and adapt. But it’s hard to find inspiration in watching good people disappear while everyone else pretends we’re going to be fine.

Sometimes the truest thing a leader can say is just this: it really su-ks right now.

Moving teams to outsourcing companies like NTT, Infinite has completely misfired. Instead of improving efficiency, it crippled operations, destroyed accountability, and ki-led ownership. Rebadged staff don’t respond, don’t resolve issues, and have no stake in outcomes. Management must stop making these reckless decisions — you cut inefficiency, not entire teams. What was meant to streamline costs has backfired, creating chaos and eroding trust. Leadership should focus on empowering in-house talent, enforcing accountability, and rebuilding culture. Stop outsourcing responsibility — it’s not cost-saving, it’s self-sabotage. Learn to lead, not to offload. Fix the structure before the foundation collapses entirely.

Credit Admin was told to work from home due to ceiling repair. The following week layoffs came. Turns out there was no ceiling repairs. They needed all the admins at home to give them the boot via zoom.

Mike reads these posts? Somehow, I think he does. Unlike Frank, it seems like it gives him a pulse on employees, better than the survey. Frank used it to find out our thoughts and get revenge

What’s really frustrating, and honestly a little disturbing, is how many of our leaders have started acting like politicians. They ignore anything negative, spin reality, and only focus on whatever sounds good in a town hall or email. It’s insulting to our intelligence and completely out of touch with what’s actually happening on the front lines, where the real work gets done.

Until leadership stops pretending everything is fine and starts listening to the people doing the work, nothing will change. Just more talk, less trust, and a widening gap between the top and the rest of us.

I don't trust them anymore when they say it's over.

Tomorrow is the last day for the employee survey. How many have completed it, because nothing ever changed from the past surveys. I’m not sure of the purpose of the survey, so why waste my time. I don’t trust anything here anymore, the company has completely changed as of definitively September/October this year, noticeably the targeting of employees by management and HR for minor things are strange behaviors.

AT&T would face a lot less resistance to change if leadership finally dropped the RTO obsession. Most of us support performance-based expectations and accountability, but the forced return and relocation policies have turned the majority of employees against upper management.

You can’t rebuild trust while punishing the workforce. People aren’t resisting change, they’re resisting bad leadership. Until that changes, you’ll keep getting the bare minimum effort and zero loyalty in return.

In every company that I have ever worked for, my focus has always been advocating for the customer, whether that be in new product development, maintenance of existing products, resolving issues that are encountered, or being available when the customer needed help.

I have had the pleasure/joy over my career of having worked at companies that had this same value set. It was vital that the customer knew that he could trust us to do him right

While at F5, I continued the value set of advocating for the customer, however I soon learned that this was not the value set of F5. I continually encountered strong resistance. Premature release of software, software that was buggy and customer sub cases that were ignored to name a few.

Since my RIF, I have interviewed with many companies and to date haven’t found one that places the customer first. It’s about stock price and revenue. And after F5, I choose not to work in that type of environment again.

That’s what I understood, but I just want to be sure. You’ll have to forgive my skepticism and distrust.

Are employee surveys anonimous and confidential for real or are they just lying to us?

Apologies if this is another sad post, but can someone clarify how in-office attendance is actually tracked? Are we talking badge swipes, IP addresses, or just whatever the reporting AI spits out each week?

I keep landing on these “magical” lists that show I’m not here even though I’m in the office 8.5 hours a day, three days a week. Meanwhile, there are folks coffee badging or popping in for a few hours who never seem to make the cut. I’m not trying to police anybody else (what they do is not my business), but this system does not line up with reality.

We used to be able to check our own badge records, now it’s “ask your manager”. I believe my manager’s is advocating for me, but honestly, at this point I feel like I have to advocate for myself, too. If this is really about looking for reasons not to give bonuses or reasons to push people out just say that. Don’t lie on me.

Just venting, but also genuinely asking for some transparency.

A good friend of mine who has inside knowledge shared with me that your company is now 100% monitored.

It's a contracted service, and they are to monitor everything. The threshold for flagging and reporting is at the lowest bar. The service started in October and the service continues to March 2026.

I'm not sure why the sudden mistrust, but it's disturbing to be working under a microscope.

What is the purpose of this?

My source said that I should share with my trusted coworkers, but I don't even know who I can trust anymore.

It's not as if we haven't been lied to by the leadership before.

Engagement Pulse Survey (employee satisfaction survey) is going to be sent out early in November. The result of this thing seems to be nr. 1 priority of our management around here...

Our overlords care the most about two questions in particular in the survey:

1. Do you trust the management?
2. Would you reccomend Kyndryl as a company to work for?

The rest of the questions is fluff and they even admitted it openly the other day...

The last time most people did not bother filling it in and some of those few who did submitted answers that were less than praise (since it is an anonymous survey).

Consequently, there was a mandatory follow-up investigation session where one of the FLM's loyal minions was tasked to find out who the troubkemakers are... They went about it by saying on a Teams call: "raise your hand if you trust the manager"...

This time around we are all asked to go into a prep-session where we will be instructed on "how to properly understand the questions" prior to filling in the survey and we are encouraged to then fill it in together...

So - I expect we will go from the lowest employee happiness ever which (was the last survey's result to the highest employee happiness ever) and then there will be rounds of applause and patting on shoulders circling around in newsletters and the local talking heads will have stuff to talk about till the christmass and will be thanking each other and nominating each other for employees of the quarter based on this while we will be witnessing more stealthy firings, clients leaving, teams & roles blending and so on.

And this stuff is orchestrated by individuals who also send out non-anonymous feedback requests about their performance to their subordinates and then they read out loud the praise they get in front of all who had to participate.

CEE in a nutshell for all y'all.

many companies do this but ADP has always been built on trust and results in the years i’ve been there
However they are now testing pc activity tracking tools to measure how active you are and to determine if you’re active enough.
such a shame that they don’t want trust their employees based on deliverables and are now exploring pc activity to measure your value.

How tomes have changed!

An Open Letter to Executives Forcing Return-to-Office

I was hired under the clear promise of being a full-time telecommuter. I delivered as a high performer, year after year, proving remote work was not a compromise but a strength. I built my life — my routines, my family commitments, my finances — around that agreement. And with little warning, you’ve torn it away. Now I’ll sit in an office four days a week, alone, while my team remains remote.

This isn’t “culture.” It’s disregard. It tells me the company’s word means nothing, and that the lives employees built in trust don’t matter when weighed against optics or unused real estate. You’ve broken promises, disrupted families, and drained morale — not because performance demanded it, but because control did.

Ask yourself this: if someone told you tomorrow that your life no longer mattered in the equation — that your commitments, your children, your health, your stability were irrelevant — how would you feel? That is what you’ve told us. That is the message every employee hears in your decision.

The truth is, most of us don’t fully empathize until we are the ones enduring the upheaval. But leadership without empathy is not leadership at all — it’s cruelty dressed up as policy. How do you, as human beings, reconcile dismantling the lives of people who trusted you? How do you justify it when you lay your head on the pillow at night?

You may think workers will comply quietly. But the truth is clear: the best people are leaving — not because they can’t adapt, but because they refuse to be treated as expendable. And when they’re gone, you won’t just have weakened a company — you’ll have to live with the fact that you were the one who broke the trust, dismantled lives, and chose control over humanity. That’s not a business failure. That’s a moral one.

The silence is deafening.

The very top is 100% silent.

Midmanagers are silent.

We hear only occasional comments from a manager or two.

The trust is lost. This is just a demonstration of a forever-changed culture.

I used to love working here.

Over, and out.

Every town hall we hear the same message from the execs in that they go to all out global offices and meet ‘amazing’, ‘innovative’, ‘inspirational’, ‘hard working’ staff etc etc.
I can’t say that any of the execs I’ve seen on the town halls has given me the same impression or confidence, they might be hard working but who actually knows, so what oversight does the board have on their appointees and how good they are as it doesn’t seem to be much?

My manager reportedly gave me up. Stupid as a box of rocks. Or else I’m being fed lies. Prob both.

Its quite regrettable and didn't need to happen.

It says the data is aggregated and anonymous but doing some reading about it makes me skeptical that it's actually anonymous and that I won't be punished for having some negative things to say about the direction we are going and how much I trust management.

Not trying to lose my job, but would also love to tell them how bad it’s gotten here.

Is this a version of He-l ?

I work today but who knows about tomorrow

Trust? They destroyed that. They don’t care.

Remember to keep your soul, give them 8 hours, but not your soul.

They don’t care.

Have observed they delete comments or posts that present the ugly truth. Then the question becomes is this a paid board to spy on current and or former employees? Why delete the post/comments that highlight the truth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/11/microsoft-ceo-nadella-says-company-must-rebuild-trust-with-employees.html

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in a Thursday online meeting that the company has work to do to smooth relations with employees.

Nadella was responding to concerns that have been raised following several rounds of layoffs and demands for a partial return to in-person work.

“I think we can do better, and we will do better,” Nadella said.

Your voice survey link was sent me for the yearly employee survey. I really have mixed feelings about giving real honest feedback. Leadership knows who doesn't fill out the survey and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who has something negative about the company despite them saying it's confidential. Yes, they know what you say when you provide feedback that represents an outlier that could be hurtful to others and the company. This could be the first year in five years that I am not going to complete the survey. Why? Because at the end of the day, our opinions really don't matter.

Michael Mulvihill of Fox says that “Nielsen’s measurement of YouTube NFL game from last Friday will not be made available to other Nielsen clients.”

He calls it “a flagrant departure from Nielsen’s history of transparency and a slap in the face to long-standing clients.” Bottom line? “When it comes to streamers the rules simply don’t apply.”

And don't forget that NFL sent out a scathing notice telling the world that Nielsen is costing them millions of view and dollars.

CLIENTS ARE FURIOUS AT NIELSEN. I won't be surprised when they move to the competition and Nielsen goes the way of Kodak! I also won't shed a tear for Nielsen!

If he/she says you're safe, it doesn't have to be true. They like to smile and say the things that'll keep you off their backs, but most of it is not true. Make sure to look out for yourself.

Hi all, It's really cool that we can all share information anonymously here but it bothers me that this is totally public. I think that it makes sense to move these important and sensitive conversations to a place where only Illumina employees have access (maybe Glassdoor bowls?). There is no way of knowing if the information posted here is coming from a good place or being planted by competition or outsider haters (fu-k you Alex Di-kinson). We all know that our conversations and sentiment here leaks out to Linkedin and may end up having an impact on how our company and teams are perceived externally (investors, competition, etc.) and that may make our work even harder. What do you all think?

We want to catch up on our former newsletter where we reported on an Executive Board decision regarding a recurring workforce transformation.

On August 5th and September 1st, 2025, the SE Works Council (Europe) was informed about urgent measures which impact all board areas under the codename “Project Mongoose” in an extraordinary consultation. This project is the implementation of the announcement by Dominik Asam and Christian Klein during the past Q2 Earnings Call, which can be summarized by the headlines of 1-2% reduction of SAP’s global workforce.

The SE Works Council (Europe) expresses its deep concern over the decision to proceed with another wave of redundancies in 2025, marking the second such initiative this year following P24 (“Project 24”) Wave 3. Despite reassurances to the contrary by the Executive Board earlier this year, this development underscores a continued pattern of workforce changes without adequate time to assess the prior transformations. This raises the question: What problems may lie beneath SAP’s Half Year financial figures that have forced the Executive Board to resort to such urgent measures?

While the rationale for Project Mongoose has been framed and presented in terms of adapting to technological change – particularly referencing the effects of AI and location strategy – the actual measures appear to us better aligned with short-term financial targets rather than strategic transformation, wrapped in “lean adjustment” terminology. This paradox between reasoning and actions risks undermining employee trust.

The lack of clarity around projected cost savings, customer impact, AI-related redesign, and location strategy further exacerbates our concerns. We fear these decisions may lead to long-term harm – both talent loss and diminished customer trust. The current lack of transparent and straightforward communication creates uncertainty, which reduces organizational efficiency and erodes confidence in the Executive Board.

The SE Works Council (Europe) urged management to present the reasons for the job cuts in more detail and depth, commit to meaningful reskilling initiatives, and avoid reducing strategic workforce decisions to routine cost-cutting exercises, as to us the current Executive Board decision does not seem to be connected to a discernible logic. Following Project Mongoose and P24, we are worried that SAP and the Executive Board might adopt this practice as another adjustment tool that may be used freely whenever financial targets suggest it.

We remain committed to monitoring the execution process, both from the SE Works Council (Europe) perspective and through the local Employee Representations of the impacted countries. During the consultation process, we have been assured that all impacted employees are treated with respect and dignity and within the legal guarantees of the respective countries. Also, at the end of this consultation, we will keep advocating for a long-term vision that values the expertise and dedication of our workforce. We will come back with more information on this topic in due time.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions and look forward to your feedback.

NFL takes aim at Nielsen ratings: ‘There are millions of viewers they are systematically undercounting’

The NFL thinks the Nielsen ratings are sc--wing them out of millions of viewers!

I guess that is what you get when you fire your most experienced and talented people that had been there for 20-35 years and replace them with cheap hires from Mexico and India!!

How long until the clients get sick of this and walk away take their money to a better competitor! Nielsen did this to themselves and I won't cry when they go under!

I relocated to the hub based on assurances of job security and professional growth. Despite these commitments, I have now been laid off. It is deeply concerning to see management decisions that appear to disregard the well-being and stability of employees’ lives.

I really thought that after this phase that I would find reason to believe in the firm again. The opposite happened. It’s clear to me that this is not a place I want to work.

Even though I’m safe, my faith and trust in leadership is broken forever. The way they kept demotions/grade drops under the radar intentionally and their handling of the six-month layoff process generally is inexcusable and riddled with unforced error after unforced error from the disastrous, word salad, tone-deaf firm town hall to the callous superficially transparent corpo comms.

The results are also a complete failure. I don’t see any efficiencies gained, just unnecessary confusion with all the middle management boneheads still around bloating the org chart. And the people they decided to promote? Nearly all are brown nosers or obviously unqualified.

On top of that i no longer feel any job security. What’s to stop the firm from arbitrarily dropping my pay a year or six months from now? Now that leadership has the taste of blood, it seems they like and will return for more. I don’t want to be here when that happens and I don’t have to be.

I didn’t think it would come to this but I’m going to start actively looking. The firm can do what it wants and I am sure will be just fine but I want no part of this new culture where employees are seen as less than human cogs to be broken, switched around internally or cast aside on management’s whim. No thanks.

notice that belk made a press release about donating $50K yesterday ( a drop in the bucket for a large corporation) after questions where raised about where store level charity sale money ends up.

I know the first thing I’m going to do is move all my assets out Edward Jones. That way they can’t make any profits off of my investments now and the future. Will also tell family and friends to do the same.

Why 'serial layoffs' are a new job-market norm for workers

Serial layoffs become common, impacting employee trust and morale. AI's role in job cuts grows, leading to longer unemployment for affected workers.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2025/08/26/serial-layoffs-are-a-new-job-market-norm.html
The Business Journals
Aug/26/2025 05:24 PM
Location: Sacramento, California

Associates no longer trust leadership because of their random layoffs. Hopefully those who are still there will remember the dynamics when the next associate satisfaction survey comes out. The typical cycle happens in that the Site Leader will bring in a modest lunch to give the impression of associate appreciation before they drag everyone thru the dirt for the following 11 months. For those who stay long enough to feel like you're being loyal, consider all of the holiday seasons you miss out on before they lay you off

Late Friday email, how thoughtful 🙄 Our ever-eloquent Mark Chong was kind enough to enlighten our "simpler minds" with a masterclass on the intricacies of tariffs. 👏 Nobel-worthy. Now, with bated breath, let's wait for the follow-up email explaining how these tariffs will be navigated to ensure our "oh-so-precious" coworkers and their meticulously crafted compensation plans will be gracefully adjusted. Because, of course, we wouldn’t want anything less than perfection for the team we "care so deeply" about. Right? It says it right on the cdw website: "We prioritize a balanced coworker life with diverse programs, reflecting our values of trust, connection and commitment. We engage our coworkers and listen to their needs through focus groups, surveys and learning opportunities.

CDW aspires to be the best place for talent by promoting equity in our processes for hiring, advancing, developing and retaining coworkers. Our coworkers are empowered to reach their highest potential, and we provide a variety of tools and development opportunities to help them achieve their career aspirations."

Can hardly wait! #trust #commitment