Crossroads
Hey everyone!
I'll be completing my bachelor's soon, and just wanted some honest opinions. When I went into this bachelor's program through Frito, I loved my job, the culture at the plant, and what the company stood for, so I was fully intending on using it internally.
The past few years or so, there has been a major shift in morale and culture within my plant at least. I work in the production environment.
I don't know if it is company wide or localized to my plant with new leadership changes, but I personally feel like it all started going downhill when our quarterly performance bonuses were taken entirely. Following this, leadership that has come in and moved up, started being more secretive and weaponizing policy against floor workers. I've noticed a lot of sneaky retaliatory practices that make it hard to prove. (Think along the lines of if you report, it makes you look crazy and paranoid. I'd also like to add not to me specifically; I'm actually pretty high on the "good list" at my plant, so this isn't like a bitter personal observation.)
The culture feels very very us vs them and management now goes out of their way to make sure we know that we aren't on their socioeconomic level, and we are not their peers. Now, while I understand professionalism and there needs to be some sort of separation in who has authority versus who doesn't, I feel like it shouldn't feel so class warfare-like.
Before, I felt like our management acted like normal people and worked to build genuine, authentic relationships with us and actually cared about our well-being. They asked our opinion on how we could change things, took our feedback into consideration, etc. (Take care of your people and they will take care of you and bend over backwards. No, seriously.)
Anyway, I'm a top performer with lots of accolades and recognition (including many compliments from external auditors), I love my job, I used to love this company, but the culture shift within my plant has me second guessing myself. Why would I want to move up in a place that does not value the people actually doing the work and making the magic happen?
So my question is, is this company wide? Does this culture continue on into corporate or is this just a shift at my plant?
I feel like my leadership doesn't understand what leadership actually is and they shove accountability off on anyone and everyone but themselves. Ownership equates to more than just authoritarian control.
Is this company wide or does my specific leadership just need a reality check?
Sorry for the ramble. Honestly I'm a bit upset. It's unsettling to be so far into a long term plan to no longer even want that anymore. I'm big on ethics and not treating others as if they're beneath you.
I genuinely hope corporate leadership is reading this forum and taking notes. The culture shift I have been experiencing is exactly how you lose long term loyalty.