#turnover

When I started here, I thought I was joining a serious tech team. Turns out it is more like a finance group pretending to understand tech. The culture feels empty and the talent that used to make things run is mostly gone. It is strange to watch a once solid place lose its identity bit by bit.

It feels like every few months someone else is being shown the door, and it’s taking a real toll on what’s left of the team. We lose skilled people faster than we can train new ones, and the work keeps getting shuffled around until no one really owns anything. Morale is at rock bottom because nobody knows if they’ll be next, and that kind of fear makes it impossible to do your best work. What’s worse is watching all that experience walk out the door straight into our competitors. If leadership doesn’t stop treating layoffs like a fix-all, there won’t be much of a company left to rebuild.

What is going on in the Medicaid segment with so many top leaders leaving suddenly, does anyone know? Regional VP's, CEO's, lots of top level movement....seems suspicious.

The numbers don’t lie. Promos used to be held at no more than 2.5% of staff. This year it’s less than 0.9% for all of foundational services. CTS has 3800+ employees and are getting 34 promos. Assume it won’t be layoffs next, it will be people exiting… quickly

Is this true for Phillips 66, 75% of the company’s are having problems keeping collage graduate's? I have a friend that wants to retire but he was asked to stay to get a person trained. For now every new person that came in has quit after one month.

By Mattias Bergstrom, Former Forbes Councils Member.

As software technology leaders, we face the same challenges as leaders in other engineering industries, but there are differences.

One of our biggest challenges is employee churn. This is where software companies suffer more than others, especially when losing engineers—because it is not just a resource being lost but training, insight and morale that will take time to replace and can disrupt production. The cost of employee churn is higher than we think. Studies have shown that the average cost to replace a highly skilled employee is 213% of their annual salary.

PayScale found that in 2018, companies like Google and Amazon with above-normal salaries and desirable employee perks still suffered from a median employee tenure of just about 1 year.

We need to start looking to cause and effect analysis and stop looking at statistics. As Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

After trying to use statistics to work out what is going wrong, we have to accept that the statistics used are not helping. So, what is really going wrong? Well, when we look at software engineering versus other types of engineering, we quickly notice differences in management. In other engineering fields, most managers are engineers themselves. So, the processes and deliverables systems have been developed by engineers, for engineers, for a long time, even since the pyramids were built.

The need for software engineering became huge in the 1980s and '90s. The value of an engineer was too high to have them in management, so leads, project managers and department heads were recruited from the business sector to keep projects “on track.” As business-educated leaders typically have no education in engineering processes, they needed ways to “measure” and manage the engineers without a full understanding of what they do or how they do them.

So, all kinds of ridiculous KPI measurements were invented. The most famous in software engineering is probably the “lines of code,” in which the performance of an engineer is measured by the amount of code they write. Ways to game this include simply extending the comments in your code, having the team agree on a fixed amount of code or, as I have personally seen, checking in garbage lines of code at the end of the day and deleting them the next.

There are a bunch of examples of KPI systems still used today that all engineers know how to game—to mention a few: story point projections, change coupling, commit count and Google DORA. They can all be gamed and are so obviously developed by business-focused non-engineers who have no clue how engineering works. What is most funny is how these KPI systems all see the engineers as measurable menial workers, not as the highly educated, valuable assets that companies need to function and generate profits.

Around these business-developed and managed KPI measurement systems, development methodologies have been created, mostly to keep up with fictional business goals and for the engineers to keep up with the KPIs. Kanban, Scrum and Agile do nothing to optimize the engineering work happening; they only provide an arbitrary way for managers to feel in control.

It looks like more people will be let go in December. High-cost countries will be affected, but also Serbia and India. Serbia is usually left out (minimum impact) of the RIFs, as there is a huge turnover there, and Service Desks are decimated. Serbia is raising its minimum wage by January so entry-level jobs will be in the same range.

Will audit ever slow down the revolving door of people leaving? Every time you turn around you are explaining a finding to a new auditor that is so clueless you wonder how TAS operates and gets anything done.

Something must seriously be brewing in the pot.

I have just downloaded their sustainability report. Page 27 has some interesting figures on human capital especially those on staff and staff location and turnover. Also, the way they talk about the Voice Survey from last year like a big success without reporting the actual figures is shocking

As CCA (Complex Clinical Audit) is very young in its programs so let’s change up leadership by moving around Directors that have never worked in other line of business…this makes zero sense. JS the Staff VP this is her grand idea. Let’s cause more division and turnover. It’s going to take 6 months to year to train these Directors in their new positions and who’s going to have to do it…the teams the managers and staff who are currently drowning!! Don’t ever work in CCA. It’s horrible everyday and the blame rests on the managers to fix the survey results!

We have become a case study for students!

ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies in the world. So why is this successful 140-year-old company dealing with an allegedly toxic organizational culture?

What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a firm’s shared values, beliefs, traditions, principles, rules, and role models for behavior. Also called corporate culture, an organizational culture exists in every organization, regardless of size, organizational type, product, or profit objective.

COVID-19 exposes cultural problems
According to a Bloomberg article, the pandemic was a difficult time for Exxon employees thanks, in part, to low crude oil prices. Salary increases were halted, benefits were reduced, and the company faced layoffs.

Morale was low, so after about a year and a half, Bill Keillor, global IT vice president, wanted to help. His leadership teamed arranged an awards ceremony and promoted it on the company’s internal social network Yammer. According to anonymous reports, the award ceremony, which was largely virtual, turned into a tense town hall with attendees voicing concerns and asking tough questions. Exxon is known for having an authoritarian, top-down culture, so this did not sit well. Allegedly, Keillor snapped at attendees and brushed off their questions.

Turnover
After the event, employee-created memes circulated private chats, slowly making their way across the company. Some joked about quitting, but for others, it wasn’t a joke. The company’s turnover rate is the highest since 1999 when Exxon merged with Mobil. In the last two years, 12,000 employees have departed, less than half of which were from layoffs.

According to an Exxon statement, every company has experienced attrition in recent years due to the Great Resignation, and the oil and gas company does not consider this to be a long-term trend. Revelio Labs, an intelligence company that uses public employment records, says Exxon’s turnover rate is in line with the nationwide average but higher than competitors, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Exxon disagrees with this analysis.

Inside Exxon’s culture
Bloomberg Businessweek’s investigation suggests there may be a deeper problem at Exxon. The publication interviewed more than 40 employees (current and former) and reviewed dozens of Exxon’s internal documents, and found evidence that Exxon has an insular, fear-based culture that is out of touch with the outside world.

Exxon uses a performance ranking system. Previously, employees were ordered from 1-to-100 on a bell curve, but the system was reworked in 2020 to make the processes more transparent and helpful to employees. Instead, employees are placed in performance categories. Anyone in the lowest category can choose between a performance improvement plan or severances. According to Reuters, about 5 to 10 percent of the company’s workforce is assigned performance improvement plans. Employees in the lowest-performing tier can save their job by improving their performance, but a significant portion of them will leave.

A senior corporate advisor says the system should not be feared or a source of anxiety because it helps employees succeed and keeps their performance in line with organizational objectives. On the other hand, some individuals say the ranking system makes employees hesitant to share bad news or unpopular opinions.

According to an analysis by CultureX, an MIT organization that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate organizational culture using Glassdoor reviews, Exxon faces toxicity challenges and ranks below 143 out of the 196 industry benchmarks CultureX measures. The most frequently discussed cultural values, according to more than 1,400 Glassdoor reviews, are agility, performance, and execution.

Exxon on the defense
An Exxon spokesperson responded to these criticisms, saying they were unfounded. The spokesperson pointed to the number of new employees hired every year and how long people tend to stay with the organization. She suggested Bloomberg’s investigation made broad observations with few data points.

Despite these questions about ExxonMobil’s organizational culture, the company is performing well financially with its stock nearing a record high. If there is indeed an organizational culture problem, Exxon will have to address it to attract and retain the best talent.

In the Classroom
This article can be used to discuss organizational culture (Chapter 7: Organization, Teamwork, and Communication), morale (Chapter 9: Motivating the Workforce), and turnover (Chapter 10: Managing Human Resources).

Discussion Questions

Define organizational culture, morale, and turnover.

What evidence is there to suggest ExxonMobil has a negative organizational culture?

If ExxonMobil has a top-down, authoritarian culture, why do you think employees spoke up during the award ceremony about their concerns? Why do you think more than 40 employees agreed to speak with Bloomberg?

This article was developed with the support of Kelsey Reddick for and under the direction of O.C. Ferrell, Linda Ferrell, and Geoff Hirt.

References:
"ExxonMobil," Sloan Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/culture500/company/c289/ExxonMobil

Jennifer Hiller and Shariq Khan, "Angst at Exxon as Managers Begin Employee Performance Reviews," Reuters, June 21, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/exxon-cut-us-workforce-by-up-10-annually-bloomberg-news-2021-06-21/

Kevin Crowley, "Exxon’s Exodus: Employees Have Finally Had Enough of Its Toxic Culture," Bloomberg, October 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-13/exxon-xom-jobs-exodus-brings-scrutiny-to-corporate-culture

https://www.mheducation.com/highered/blog/2024/06/does-exxon-have-a-culture-problem-march-2023.html

Not suprised oracle is laying ppl off. They’ve done 150+ acquisitions and the same thing happens every damn time... staff bail or get cut. This Has Happened MANY Times Before!!!!! oracle doesnt care about your job, they care about tech, customers, and $$$. once they buy a company, they gut the overlap, toss people they dont need, and shove the rest into whatever buzzword strategy they’re chasing (cloud, ai, whatever sounds cool to wall street). turnover there is already huge, so add an acquisition and yeah... ppl are basically walking severance packages waiting to happen. remember sun microsystems, peoplesoft, bea? same playbook. oracle buys, oracle cuts, oracle moves on. so if you’re shocked, idk what to tell you. layoffs are not a bug in oracle world, they’re the feature. ....

Because that’s all that’ll be left in a few months once the job market turns. I heard 50+ in marketing solutions are planning to bounce by EOY. They don’t trust leadership at all because of Martin and Spiegel

Sampath strikes again with his favorite sport: talking down to the workforce while pretending he’s discovered management philosophy. Translation of his post: “We cut middle managers, slowed promotions, shrank the talent pool, and guaranteed attrition… but hey, decisions move faster!”

This isn’t leadership, it’s narcissism with a LinkedIn filter. Only a CEO at Verizon could brag about hollowing out the company while admitting it leaves employees with fewer career paths, worse pay equity, and higher churn. Then he pats himself on the back for “fewer layers.”

It’s not strategy, it’s shrinkage dressed up as innovation. The BSG boy is just narrating his own PowerPoint slides.

Apache needs leadership starting from the top in midland and houston or nothing will change... the culture is broken and turnover never stops. People want flexibility better pay and benefits and leaders who actually follow through

You need to DO BETTER & practice what you preach.

Stop lying, it's better to keep quiet than to lie.

right now Apache & mgmt cares more about wall street than the people working in the field... good decision making and clear communication would go a long way but it feels missing. consolidation might help but without change at the svp level and above it will stay the same cycle.

Why are so many leaving. Are these silent LRs

We’re literally down to bare bones now, without anyone who truly knows all the ropes. Over the past two years, skilled veterans have been disproportionately targeted. I don’t even think it’s about age. More likely, it’s because good work and accumulated experience come with a price. Tomorrow, leadership will have no right to complain when there’s no quality work coming out of their organization. You get what you pay for. What short-sighted a--hats.

This can't be normal, right? This is my first real corporate job, so I don't have much experience to go off. However, I've only been in this role for five, roughly 6 months. There have been multiple layoffs since I joined the company, is it always like this? I have had three different managers in the span of pretty much six months... what is going on?

Shweta Bhatia 7 month tenure as CTO.... what did she do?

Another team lift out in Denver. Nothing to see here folks. Also, a PM left the twin cities.

Senior leadership is doing a bang up
Job.

I commend all the ones finally leaving Walgreens, there are a lot more than I thought would leave without being forced out. You have my full respect. You will be so much better off regardless of what you decide to do in life. For the ones that drink the kool aid nonstop and will never leave unless forced to, you get what you deserve. It's the best you can get is Walgreen's. Says enough.

Why does Cash Vault have such high turnover? They are contract workers, so they don't get displaced, but it seems like they come and go so quickly.