#morale

Forced on-site work for most teams, useless middle management, directors/VPs getting to switch shoes and retain/upgrade their salaries despite abysmal failures in the orgs they preside over, corporate leaders throwing out dead and played-out initiatives that also fail constantly (because they are all outdated, obsolete, and largely ineffective), morale in he-l, frustration across departments boiling over from increased workloads and decrease team sizes causing burnout. I'm sure there are others to add to the litany, but I'm wondering, when does the straw break across the camel's back and we take back power as employees. Do we continue to drink the koolaid or speak up and pushback on these incompetent leaders and processes? Please, if you feel or deal with any of this, it is time to start writing letters or something. This cannot continue. We're in the age of modernization yet things feel so artificially dystopian. Do not play the side lines. Make your voices heard!

I’ve been here for almost a year and a half. Top performer in my store, we’re a small store not super high volume. I was wanting to move up to Assistant Manager and eventually Sr Manager Retail. But I don’t see that happening. There’s no new stores being built around me, nobody is being promoted, my store managers have stayed the same since I was hired. why would they promote a top performer when they can just keep performing?

Over the past year, I’ve watched some of the most hardworking and impactful people on my team be let go. At first, I didn’t understand why morale across the organization felt so low... but now I do (sigh)

It’s hard to stay motivated when it feels like merit and dedication don’t matter. The people who consistently overdeliver, who take ownership and push projects forward, are the ones being cut. Meanwhile, others who do the bare minimum remain and often get the credit.

So if performance and impact aren’t the criteria for layoffs, then what is?
Is it tenure? Favoritism? A random lottery? Because from where many of us stand, it certainly doesn’t look like the decisions were based on contribution or capability.

Reducing our paycheck amounts in 2026 with this 27 week pay period non-sense, increasing our out-of-pocket health care expenses and still pushing us to buy EH stock because nobody else wants it??? Seriously Executives, stick your head out of your million and billion dollar bubbles and see how everyone else is trying to survive with the low merit increases and next to nothing AIPs now. Buy EH stock with what??? We don't have anything left at the end of the month after we pay our bills thanks to the C suite pocketing all of the company profits.

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.

My manager has this way of talking that makes you question your own work constantly. He acts like we are lucky to even get a paycheck here. I see my teammates come in every morning looking completely defeated. It is really hard to watch good people get treated this way. I wish I could quit.

I thought I'd feel great this weekend, make up for lost sleep. I was very much wrong. I still feel like cr-p, I still can't relax, and I still have trouble sleeping. I think this whole thing has been hanging over our heads for so long that it'll take us a while to go back to normal.

No matter how long you stay or how hard you work, promotions just don’t happen. I don't know if this is just my group or a company-wide issue, but we're losing great people due to that.

I wasn’t laid off but I’m over Target. My 7 year old could run the company better than their current leadership team at the moment. Everything feels messy and too much uncertainty. It doesn’t align with my values and I almost wish I was laid off. How do I continue to work for a company that operates as such?

Over the last year or two, this place has gone way off track. Morale’s at rock bottom. People are grating on each other mercilessly. We’ve got RTO mandates, turf wars over desks, and middle managers acting like it’s a contest to see who can show the least empathy. It feels less like Ford and more like the opening scene of Anyone But You - chaotic, tone-deaf, and completely detached from reality.

Executives talk about “transformation” but can’t seem to manage basic humanity. Families are being disrupted left and right child pickups, elder care, medical needs, nanny arrangements, all brushed off with the corporate equivalent of “we don’t care.” Instead of solving problems, leadership doubles down on punishment, turning “accountability” into cruelty. Somewhere along the line, we turned into a bad sequel to Office Space only this time there’s no stapler to steal, just another RTO badge swipe to prove you exist.

Yet here’s the thing: there’s nothing broken that can’t be fixed if your heart’s still in it. The people who post here, the ones who still speak up even through the noise are the same ones who once believed in this place. We cared. We showed up. We tried to make Ford better for our coworkers, our community, and the future we were building together.

If you’re having a rough time, I’m here for you in spirit. You’re not alone. At least one person at Ford is rooting for you, hoping you find your footing again, hoping you remember what it felt like when this place still had soul. We used to laugh here. We used to smile. There was a time when people genuinely looked out for each other. Now it’s like everyone’s trapped in The X-Files: trust no one.

All of us “perfect” people with the “perfect” lives seem to be locked in this quiet war, trying to survive, trying to look strong, and sometimes tearing each other down in the process. Still perfect-looking, maybe. But far from perfect, me included. I’m anxious, nervous, a little bitter at times. I don’t trust people the way I used to, even the ones I probably would’ve been friends with if the company showed a little heart.

I’ll be honest, there have been moments where I’ve cheered in the face of others struggling, not out of cruelty but from my own exhaustion, my own hurt. When you’re fighting to survive, you start finding light in the grimmest stories, just to remind yourself you’re still standing. And for that, I’m sorry. We’ve all been there. We’re all driven by love of this place, even when it’s buried under layers of anger and frustration. Sometimes we’ve inappropriately found cause for celebration in someone else’s pain because it meant our own survival. But no one truly hates you. No one here wants you to fail. That love is still there, even if it’s quiet.

We can all be cruel at times. That’s what makes us human. What matters is that we move forward, making the best of bad situations while still offering support to the people who need it most.

There’s still a chance to fix the vibe in this palce. But it starts with empathy, not metrics. Maybe we all need a little more Ferris Bueller and a little less Fight Club. Remember when we built things instead of tearing each other apart? Yeah. Let’s get back to that.

All the member-centric, one team/one dream and right care/right time/right place blather can pay the bills. But you realize what a charade it all really is after it resurfaces for the third or fourth time at the same starting point.

Doesn’t lend itself to fulfillment through meaningful work, that’s for sure.

Seems as though we’ve lost all our people in the know on this board??

Wondering if the lack of info being shared on teams at risk and future of more waves is because there’s nothing to share, they’ve been warned about leaks and gone silent or are more and more people (including our informants) getting dead tired of any of this talk and don’t care anymore or have left themselves.

Lots of job postings, not India, what’s that about, fake? Hiring back same roles for less?

Please!!

Who else finds it shameful and offensive to employees that Ricoh has can spend millions on a useless Dealer meeting in Nashville (following Printing United) amid a freeze on merit increases and rolling layoffs? Who are they kidding?... Most of what was presented - except for A3 MFPs and Brother-A4's cannot even be sold by their Dealers.

How is morale at the office? My team has lost so many people this year it feels strange to go into the office and have basically no one around. How is everyone doing?

America feels like it’s falling apart. Prices keep climbing, people are barely getting by, and the pressure from every direction is unbearable. Schwab treats workers like disposable parts, piling on more stress while paying wages that can’t even cover the basics for most frontline employees . Yet somehow, everyone keeps showing up, pretending it’s normal, pretending nothing has changed. It’s madness, and everyone feels it, even if no one wants to say it out loud.

Our terrible RE management strikes again! We had 2 Directors: one everyone loved and respected who was onsite, the other we all complain about in our Pulse surveys who is in a completely different office and is horrible to work with. A reasonable person would think if they had to cut one of them it would be the ineffective Director. However, LG is personal friends with the AVP. She and her husband go to dinner with AP and her husband, so when a choice needed to be made, AP decided to save her friend rather than the most suitable candidate. Now our team is stuck with the horrible Director and her nastiness. Typical of our terrible leadership at USAA Real Estate.

Payslips downloaded?
Contacts and needed docs saved?
Be strong.

Heavy sigh

In the past 2 years Prabhat Singh had lead the group to sink. He is not allowed to hire. Everyone is leaving him. Teams have shrunk by 50% because people we're unhappy. He expects people to work on the weekends so outages will happen on Saturday and customers won't notice. We have an outage every single day.
Someone had shut down the flow on SBG and the whole group is on a KTLO mode. It's just a matter of time until there's going to be a massive cut but the best way it to shake down top down and not bottom up

What a joke. These EC member elitists are getting millions in stock options and salaries and then are giving us merit increases less than what inflation is. Then they expect us to be happy with an extra 10 percent bonus? The RTO answer was a joke as well. Rick needs to open his eyes if he hasn't seen top talent leave. I can't wait until we get younger leadership and not anyone from McKinsey

They will tell you in Townhalls that other places "like" the Open Plan, unassigned hoteling.

The truth is that if you actually speak to any of those "other places" (San Ramon, Perth, etc.); none of them have a good thing to say about it.

HMP is a slow motion disaster, designed to get you to quite without severance.

Their fragile egos just refuse to take any accountability. Of course culture and morale are high when they don't have to answer to anyone (the board of directors asleep at the wheel), don't have to worry about being laid off, and collect fat bonus and merit increases no matter what. Don't accept their relentless gaslighting and keep speaking up on their lack of leadership and poor performance.

Are you feeling that?

My team is beyond the breaking point. And being told that we are empowered to say ‘no’ to incoming tasks isn’t working. If we say no, the action gets escalated, and then it comes back around with more weight, more visibility, and a stern warning.

How does this continue? Folks know the industry and job market isn’t great so they stay and swallow the pill (and their pride), but everyone is so stretched that quality of deliverables is decreasing, opportunities are being missed, communications are being overlooked, and morale issues are sort of acknowledged but swept under the rug.

Anyone else seeing what’s happening in GVSE right now? From what I’m hearing, any new roles are being restricted to grade 7/8s. Combine that with all the automation initiatives being pushed on us (auto discounts, auto del reg approvals, auto emails via Gong), and it really feels like the intent is to make these “Early in Career” roles going forward.

For those of us who’ve been here for 5+ years, it’s hard not to feel like they’re trying to clear space for younger, cheaper talent. There’s almost no room left to be strategic or to bring real experience into the process. Leadership has done little to help us adapt to this new pod model. No real enablement, no clear direction, just constant change with minimal support.

Honestly, I’ve never felt more de-motivated in my career at Cisco. It feels like the GVSE space is slowly collapsing, and we’re being left behind in the process.

Wondering how everyone else is feeling in the GVSE space. Am I just being paranoid?

If you were unlucky enough to get that god-awful “Friday Note” from, you know who, then you’ve already witnessed the nauseating display of wasteful spending happening at headquarters. With threats of massive layoffs hanging over everyone’s heads, right before the holidays, mind you- it’s beyond tone-deaf to flaunt their lavish parties and celebrations.

It’s absolutely deplorable. A disgusting, out-of-touch flex from people who clearly have no clue what it’s like to worry about paying rent/mortgage, feeding their kids, or surviving after Q3 earnings hit and heads start to roll. While the field scrambles to hold everything together, they’re busy partying it up on our dime. I can only imagine the “celebrations” they have on the company dime that they don’t dare share images of.

I’m genuinely embarrassed to be associated with such a shameless and heartless company

Almost everyone who was valuable to Fiserv have left, some retired, some were tired of the complete mismanagement, some found better opportunities…. Bottom line, the cream of the crop are gone leaving the less talented and the incompetent. I don’t see Fiserv coming back at this point, it’s too far gone, too little too late, too bad….

The obscene thing is that management think they know their stuff, but they are the most incompetent people I’ve ever seen. Turn out the lights.

Just listen to the music while this ship sinks….

Alright chat - the writing is on the wall. Company is going downhill. Talent is leaving and layoffs are happening left and right. Where we going?

After that disastrous, blunt, outlook-vision, do we need to bother going in ? Why bother? Who cares about RTO

Lots of uncertainly and nervousness after yesterday=Some nice recognition--finally !

We don't get many pats on our backs any more=just kikks in the aarse+The CEO is starting to lose the rank and file=Only 55% of company in attendance=We used to get 90% on these meetings=The sales guys seemed down and had low energy=Seemed like deers in headlights=Compassion & passion is gone+Thought process is always changing like flags flapping in wind=Meps, Peps, and fops, gops, mops, (huh?) wtf? are labor intensive, high maintain, low margin that we don't want anything to do with.

poorly communicated layoffs have led to declining morale, many in my team are considering leaving

So glad that in this time of need Amazon has decided that my salary would be better suited going towards the big beautiful ballroom, than me and my family. Thanks corporate overlords.

Prove me wrong...

I was a "lifer" (almost thirty years) who was severed September 2024, and all the wind had left my sails in the turmoil throughout the year or so previous to that. In all my time there, there had never been a worse problem with either leadership (including the Dauman fiasco) or morale (including after the Freston firing).

It was still an emotional blow when it happened, but I had been expecting it and had already mapped out some personal projects I wanted to pursue in order to cleanse my palat.

After just a couple of weeks, I found that I was sleeping better, getting up earlier, laughing more, feeling more spry, and had lots of creative energy that I was excited to put to use.

In short, I felt about ten years younger -- which made me realize that this wreck of a company had been making me feel ten years OLDER.

The financial concerns that I face now now come nowhere near the stresses of being inside the ever-worsening toxic behemoth. My brain is in a far better place now.

This post is not mine, just sharing what "Been There, Glad To Be Done With That " posted earlier today - here is the link Post ID: @cy+1k8s4d0wm

It's nice to have a leader who actually sees a reflection when he looks in the mirror.

Happy to hear about the forthcoming increased flexibility.

I get the impression that-- at least for now-- there are no plans to take away people's livelihoods through layoffs to inflate the numbers in the short term, at the expense of our long-term success. A CEO who actually considers the long term impact of his decisions. Imagine that.

You mean you're not going to gut critical departments to squeeze an extra nickel out of the stock price to line your pockets?🤯🤯😱😱😱😱😮😮😮😲😲😲🫨🫨🫨

I'm optimistic about Fiserv under M!ke's leadership. Let's see where we are by Summer 2026. I'll try to hang in there until then.

And will anyone ever be held accountable for the state of affairs? Ruining people’s lives just to chase the stock price, because they have no better ideas.

This is disgusting. I feel deeply for everyone affected, and I sincerely hope they find something soon.

With so many layoffs without reason or replacements- none of these roles are actually “useless” they’re needed - the existing employees keep picking up the slack. It feels like the boiling a frog story, we just have gotten too used to doing more and more work for less and less pay. The workers have no say at all while they know the actual work being done and making the CEO money. Making the company more money to keep adding unnecessary C-suite executives with millions of dollars in pay. Why don’t we unionize? We have gotten too used to the lay offs of important workers without a real reason every Christmas. Multiple layoffs this year, we have gotten too used to this. The only “restructuring” needed is cutting the unnecessary executives and their made up roles. CEO has the personality that he’s an actor playing a CEO. These are people’s livelihoods he is playing with while getting richer than ever before.

Are we just not even going to pretend to be a compliant & sound bank? Has USAA just given up on quality leaders, innovation, member focus and truly caring about its employees. We’ve gotten so used to scraps around here, when id--ts with a title makes greed based decisions we all just nod and clap. This place will have a day of reckoning. When and how bad, who knows. My prediction is lights off and news cameras we wake up to randomly one morning.

Hello,

Just curious of the associates who still remain at the firm. Will you participate in any fundraising campaigns and have it taken out of your paycheck?