XOM is going down the path like Enron. If XOM wants to cut costs, they need to streamline its management hierarchy. Most SLS's have zero technical skills. Their jobs are to have endless 1:1 meetings and reduce team's productivity. They often set people up and create conflicts within the team because they build their success on "so-called alignment". For the past several years, we have created layers of layers of supervisors and middle managers. What values do they bring to the bottom line of the company? The chain of command structure lays out a company's lines of authority and decision-making power but it has failed to establish accountability and improve productivity at XOM.
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Management laundering scheme
They often set people up and create conflicts within the team because they build their success on "so-called alignment"
Ha-ha, 1 person working, 4 SLS are aligning on what and how that 1 person needs to do. Pure madness!
How does a technical person compete with a
Supervisor? They don’t! The non skilled manager always wins. Pathetic state of affairs
The root of the problem is the advancement guide. Requiring people to be a certain age to hit certain CLs has meant more people seeking to put themselves and those in their circles “ex-guide”, which requires them to be in supervisor/manager positions. Since HR requires very high level executive approvals to promote people early, it’s much easier to simply create more supervisor jobs.
A perfect example of this is the entire leadership team in Corporate Learning Organization (CLO) within HR. Bunch of unempathetic and fake leaders that pretend adding value, but not. LF failed her entire team but is still at the wheel!
How has your CareerConnect experience been lately?
SENIOR LEVEL SUNFLOWERS 🌻
They make up the entire meeting audience for the Sun 🌞 shining so brightly "Best and Brighest of Us All", The Executives and VP.
Worthless SLS positions are there for several important (to the company) reasons.
Parrots for the messaging and to shamelessly sell the flavor of the month slogan/safety program/morale booster
A place to put I&D tokens to drive “management” statistics up to report externally
A place to identify the best Koolaide drinkers for filling equally worthless similar positions at HQ
To ensure management forums at the plant are well attended
SLS is Senior Management way of training and finding the best sunflower Kool aid drinking, managing upward, brown nosing, Yes men and women just like themselves. It is good to know we are PIPing them and thinning the herd, a positive step but a long, long, long, way to go.
Other than the “real” SLS positions (in O&M), the rest can probably be majorly consolidated or cut. You don’t need 4 Technical SLS at a SBU for example.
Most accurate post I’ve seen in a while. Way too many chiefs and not enough indians. In the gulf coast they are shredding our department and most non PIPpers are looking already. When that house of cards falls its not going to be pretty. The plant will not survive these cuts with no last line of defense to get it back up or prevent trips. At least we will have plenty managers that can point fingers.
Almost all SLS supervisors are at CL26 or above. This is the primary reason we see many hardworking and talented CL26/27 employees got PIP'ed.
They create SLS positions to feed a pipeline for headquarters and other management positions. Over the last decade or so it’s gone too far and the scope of each SLS has become insignificant, artificially driving up the incentive for those individuals to compete amongst one another (and dragging their employees along with them) in the eternal competition for ranking and promotions.