#employeeengagement

Who all got the survey? I’m sure they’re not going to like what a lot of us have to say.

In 2024, when we were hybrid, I used to be genuinely happy going to work. I was energized, motivated, and excited to contribute to the largest telecommunications company in the United States. But after nearly a year and a half of the five-day return-to-office mandate, I feel completely drained.

Every day is a battle — fighting traffic, searching for parking, and then scrambling to find a desk. To make it worse, people schedule meetings during my commute, which makes no sense.

Back in 2024, I felt bright, energetic, and enthusiastic about the work. Now I feel like Squidward, doing the bare minimum just to get through the day. Whenever I am asked to go above and beyond or deal with some ridiculous request, my response is basically that I am commuting or that I will get to it once I can actually find a desk. The whole thing feels like a joke.

To make matters worse, everyone on my immediate team and in my department seems endlessly enthusiastic about chasing more wireless and fiber gross adds. Maybe some of that excitement is real, but a lot of it feels rehearsed. I look around and see people acting energized and engaged, and it is hard not to wonder whether they actually feel that way or are just playing the part. Honestly, the only place I ever see people expressing what this experience really feels like is on this site. In person, people seem scared to say it out loud. It often leaves me feeling like I am the only one being honest about how exhausting and demoralizing all of this has become, especially because I am overshadowed by so many coworkers who seem enthusiastic about their jobs and about taking AT&T to the stars.

PORTLAND GUY DAY:

Show up between 930 and 10 as a group. Almost everyone wearing sunglasses in the office like complete tools.

Immediately take a coffee break in the Cafe with the entire group until 1015-1030.

Take an hour lunch 12-1.

Leave between 2-3 PM.

Just received an email saying i've been selected to take the Pulse Survey.

HARD PASS

Let em have it!

Can you believe they post just a few days after the lovely HR email.

There is a link to ‘Highlights of investing in our people report’ and even a video. Exxon cares

Prepare now. The official word will be passed down shortly for a dramatic increased requirement for Connect Week attendance come September. NO ONE on my team (FI) or others I run into in office feel that connect weeks benefit them at all and I’m sure that is one reason why it’ll be put into place. Forcing senior people out? Dragging morale even lower? Flexing hollow upper management muscle? What have you heard?

In most organizations, you will typically find two groups of people. Those that are desperate to lead and those that are not interested in leading. Most times, your best leaders are in the latter group. The question is, how do you convince the latter group to want to lead?

Based on the previous goal of 11 days, we needed 132 days in office a year. To hit over 60% we now need 158 days. But, that doesn't include PTO, right? In order to get a month to require 11 days it needs to have 18 eligible days. Based on the maximum number of days each month, you'll need 34 PTO days to get back to 11 per month. Best of luck!

I have heard that a very high up person basically confirmed to some people that they have plans to bring everyone in 5 days a week starting this fall. Has anyone else heard this?

There is absolutely no reason to go above and beyond.
If you want more money, switch jobs.
If you want more time and freedom, quiet quit.
Cisco seems to be unable to distinguish between overachievers and people who put in 10 hour weeks by clicking the right buttons at the right times.
Whats the point of taking on more than you can get away with ?

I’m legitimately curious why the pendulum has swung so far to one side. Pre-covid we had balance and trust, and now we have neither. Instead of going back to balance they’ve swung to micromanagement and rigidity. What actually is fueling the need for such strict expectations and absurd tracking measures? They say they care about morale but then micromanage us like we are children.

And as an aside, we all know the timing of the latest TTUS survey just before this announcement was strategic in every way. Get those numbers up before they plummet again!

I’ve been trying to get healthier this year by eating more fresh fruits and veg, fewer processed foods, and being consistently active throughout the day. I find that my legs feel better when they’re moving throughout the workday. Does the CLT office have any treadmill desks or walking pads available? My last employer had walking desks that you could book, and I have a walking pad at home. Great for those Zoom meetings where you need to focus but don’t need to talk. Get 2k steps in off camera. TIAA has always been about promoting healthy lifestyles for their employees! Hope there are walking desks I don’t know about for the 3-4 days I’m here for 9 hours at a time.

One week away from reorg. Attitudes and employee effectiveness are in the dirt in Permian OPs. How’s everyone else functioning?

Hey fellow Vteamers! I am really proud of us for completing our Google AI professional certificates and posting about it on LinkedIn for attention and praise. It’s a monumental achievement in showing to the world that we play to win by completing another company’s training materials! When my kids bring home their participation awards, I show them my AI certificates and we celebrate our accomplishments together. AI unlocks EI and makes us amazing humans. This will save us from layoff risk and differentiate us as superstar thought leaders. Yay team!!!!

Received an invite to an “employee hypercare” session and the only reason I can think of is my peakon comments. Anyone else had this?

Employee morale is so bad and stressed out that the leadership need to bring a therapy dog to make employees feel better.

Also, because of the above point, we are stopping measurement of the employee pulse score until morale improves.

Finally, we are going to delete your-voice slack channel because the leadership team is tired of you whiners.

Just got an email to complete. Read the room Oracle where is your compassion? How likely will they read|take my comments, do these go into a black hole.. Geesh

Long time Dell person here (20 years). I'm looking at applying for a job with AWS in Austin. Curious what the culture is like. And I get it...one devil to another. But I am single income house and need to afford to live and save. And for what it is worth I am okay with going into an office 5 days a week. Just curious how it's done at AWS Austin.

Some questions:
Are desks/cubes assigned?
Do cubes have walls at least?
5 days on-site or hybrid?
Do they track badge scans openly? (Dell does...created a tool for us too)

What is the review cycle like? Annual? Are there bonuses tied to annual review? What do percentages look like?

Anything else I should know?

Its awfully quiet on here. . . . where did everyone go? Is everyone emotionally exhausted from last year?

What’s your favorite place to vacation? Your favorite island? Your favorite beach?

If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?

Think about this.

Most companies, when they see something causing unnecessary stress or friction for employees, try to fix it. Even small things. Shorter commutes, more flexibility, better alignment. It’s basic common sense because it improves morale and productivity.

Here it feels like the exact opposite.

Every decision somehow lands on the option that creates the most friction. The most inconvenience. The most disruption to people’s lives.

Live 10 miles from one office? Doesn’t matter. You’re required to drive 50 miles to another one.
Can do your job perfectly from home? Irrelevant. Be physically present anyway.
Teams are distributed across the country? Still sit in an office on Teams calls.

At some point it stops feeling accidental. It starts to feel like pain is being chosen on purpose.

And then leadership turns around and asks why there’s no culture. Why people aren’t going above the bare minimum anymore. Why morale is gone.

Morale didn’t just disappear. It was worn down decision by decision, policy by policy, until people stopped believing anything would actually improve.

Then you hear “there’s no loyalty anymore” while at the same time wondering why no one shows up to town halls, no one engages, no one cares.

It’s not confusing.

People don’t disengage for no reason. They disengage when they feel ignored, when feedback goes nowhere, and when every decision makes their day-to-day worse.

And yet somehow the expectation is that people should accept all of this, have bad policy shoved down their throats, and then turn around and be grateful for it. After surveys where honest feedback was ignored or worse, scolded.

That’s not just disconnected. It’s delusional.

This didn’t become a bottom-tier culture overnight. It got there because of decisions like this. Because of policies like this.

Culture and morale aren’t things you can slap on a PowerPoint and speak into existence. They’re built by listening, adjusting, and actually giving people a reason to care.

Right now, that reason is gone.

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Lots good comments here but leaders may not see them. So put your feedback in annual employees survey. It is anonymous and official.

Maybe it’s because I’m just new-ish to Verizon but reading this article is the first I’ve heard of some of these talent initiatives…? Culture OS? Transparent career growth? Personalized development? Making it sound it seem like we’re some A-list people developer employer.

Am I just living under a rock or is this BS?

Look at the faces in the crowd of the Employee Culture recap video and tell me that Business Leadership still believes the koolaid they’re peddling sounds delicious to the employees. What a joke. No clue

Our department has lost many members over last month, how are we supposed to handle the remaining workload effectively? Leadership in this organization doesn’t care about the people just the outcomes that they deliver for them to go to LinkedIn and post about. The culture has become so demoralizing that most of us no longer have the appetite to keep working without saying something.

Top 3 answers

Not as good of a worker as everyone thinks.

Very lazy and don’t like change in daily routine, but still wanna get paid.

It gets me out of the house, and wife says I need to have a job of sorts.

Anything you pick tells one loads about you and your lifestyle and future intent.

hike percentage
RSU refreshers

Energized — or at least pretending to be — by the first global People Team town hall of 2026, the leadership proudly announced it was “hosted live from 240G.” What they didn’t mention was that 240G looked like the cafeteria equivalent of a pep rally held for a team with a losing record: rows of empty chairs, a few confused junior staffers clutching branded notebooks, and a camera crew desperately angling shots to make the room look less… vacant.

The official recap described it as “electric.”
The broken elevator nearby disagreed.

A handful of interns were strategically scattered across the room like decorative houseplants, nodding enthusiastically on cue. Their job was simple: create the illusion of engagement, clap when leadership paused and avoid asking any questions that might accidentally require honesty or Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Then came the fireside chat — minus the fire, the warmth, or the chat. Leadership spoke passionately about “leading with empathy,” which was bold considering empathy hasn’t been spotted anywhere near the Executive Committee or People Team since the last time someone accidentally turned on their camera during a reorg meeting.

And here’s the part that truly captured the spirit of the event:

Even the universally likable Jose Minaya, or the company’s designated empathizer James LeGrand, or Eliza — our glitchy, ever‑smiling Employee of the Year — couldn’t generate a single watt of real or AI‑curated warmth in that room.
Not even a flicker.
Not even a screensaver‑level glow.

Still, the script marched on.

“Trust and empathy aren’t soft skills,” the speaker declared to the echoing cafeteria.
Correct — they’re missing skills.

The narrative continued:
“We must 'lean in' as one team.”
A curious statement, given that half the team was offshored, a quarter was interviewing elsewhere, and the remaining quarter was refreshing this website forum like it was a stock ticker.

The part about “keeping the human experience at the center of everything we do” landed especially well with the three employees still awake. Nothing says “human experience” like a mandatory town hall about empathy delivered by leaders who haven’t made eye contact with an employee since the last compensation cycle.

But the finale was the real masterpiece:
“Grateful for the dialogue, the challenge, and the continued partnership as we build what’s next — together.”

'Together.'
A beautiful word.
Almost poetic.
Especially when spoken in a room where the chairs outnumbered the humans 12 to 1.

In the end, the event achieved something remarkable:
It was the symbolism:
A leadership team preaching trust and empathy to an empty room — the perfect metaphor for a culture where the words are loud, the actions are quiet, and the audience has already left — truly and metaphorically.

Hey, here’s an idea! How about we stop giving the pinnacle award to the same people year after year?! This is a massive expense for the company just to send the same people on a weeklong vacation every year.. and it’s terrible for morale. Why are they not checking the reports for previous years to see who has already received this? At the very least they should have a five-year waiting period before they could be nominated again… but to send them just about every single year is very frustrating, incredibly unfair, and lazy on the part of senior leadership responsible for selecting the pinnacle winners.

The U.S. version of the 2026 Employee Engagement Survey will have two questions:

1. Why the heck are you still working here? Please leave.

2. What else can we do to you and your peers, in order to get you dummies to quit? We'll try anything!

The questions should read

1. How many times have you thought about quitting? 976 times.
2. Would you hire your boss, if you were the boss? If not? Why? If so, why?
3. What improvements can the company make?
4. Do you approve of our spending? Why? Or why not?
5. Who is your least favorite person in your department?
6. Is your pay acceptable? If not, prove it.
7. If you could be in any position, which position and why?
8. Do you actually enjoy your job? If yes, why? If no, why?
9. Is your job up with the times?
10. Do you feel micromanaged? On a scale from 1-10, how micromanaged do you feel?

The end.

After riding out the usual industry cycles, one thing that keeps standing out is how the "We Lead" behaviors aren't just words on a slide deck. they actually shape how things get done day to day.

Even during last year's necessary adjustments, you could see it in action: leaders at every level stepping up with clear direction, owning outcomes, and keeping teams focused on what matters most. No panic, no mixed messages .. just steady, confident guidance that helped everyone stay aligned and move forward. It's the kind of strong leadership culture that turns tough moments into proof that the system works.
What's been especially noticeable since then is how things have sharpened and improved. The focus feels even tighter, collaboration is smoother, and there's a renewed energy around delivering results. Teams are moving faster with clearer priorities, and that consistent "We Lead" mindset: taking initiative, holding ourselves accountable, and supporting one another has really taken root in the day-to-day. It creates this quiet confidence and sense of shared purpose that makes the work feel more purposeful than ever.

Definitely one of the biggest reasons the Chevron culture feels special and worth staying for. Curious if others see the "We Lead" principles showing up the same way, especially in how the organization has come through stronger on the other side.

Feels like forever since we had to fill out that useless piece of tripe. If Dan ki-led it, then he’s accomplished one win, at least