#employeeengagement

Source: Dr. Mullen

I once hired someone smarter than me. I hated how it made me feel.

→ They were sharper in meetings.
→ Faster with decisions.
→ More technically capable than I was.

Instead of feeling proud, I felt exposed.

I started wondering:

If they're better than me, what exactly am I bringing to the table?

Then it hit me.

I was competing with talent I was supposed to be leading. So I changed how I led.

1️⃣ I asked more questions than I answered.
↳ My job wasn't to have every answer. It was to get the best thinking into the room.

2️⃣ I gave credit publicly.
↳ If someone was better than me at something, I wanted everyone to know it.

3️⃣ I shared decisions earlier.
↳ People take more ownership when they help shape the answer.

4️⃣ I made disagreement safe.
↳ If your smartest people are afraid to challenge you, you're wasting their talent.

5️⃣ I admitted when I didn't know.
↳ Pretending to know everything wasn't leadership. It was insecurity.

6️⃣ I measured myself differently.
↳ Their growth became a better measure of my leadership than being the smartest person in the room.

That changed how I thought about talented people. I didn't need to outperform them.
I needed to create the conditions for them to outperform me.

Doesn't usually take this long. I didn't expect them to be positive because points at everything, but with how long they've been holding back results, they must be BAD bad this year.

Anyone heard anything?

I remember when Target was well known for solving internal problems quickly.

It's been 2 years since I've had a skip level status. Most of my team didn't take the best team survey because they don't believe it works. The biggest problem on our team was never followed up on after the survey.

Get your sh-t together, Target. How about instead of calling consultants you actually talk to the people who work there.

not a good mgmt approach IMO

Every year, employees are asked to be honest and say how they really feel. We take the time to fill out the survey, the results are reviewed, presentations are made, and action plans are discussed.

And then… what actually changes?

LOL. They got tired of planting employee questions from the audience. Playing Jeopardy - made up their own questions to answer. Too funny.

@VP Why does VZ waste money promoting internal employee videos, newsletters, emails on internal website, most employees do not have time to watch list, read, listen but do their 8 hour work.Personally, I work on my feet, not at a desk,yet local manager sends out emails I don't read until days, weeks later, unless I take my lunch.

Taking away the last bits of any real joy we have around here but pretending like they are doubling the investment. This company has no culture left.

Im wondering if the 4 hours on the clock training we are granted per month and the AI My Agent that was announced are going to be delegated by Cisco on what we study and if we use the Agent or not.

Instead, I got no training, no mentoring, and assignments outside my skill set. So much for my expectations.

And please, be honest.

Not with town halls, but real conversations about things getting better? It seems like they're hoping the issue will fix itself.

I changed roles thinking it would help, but it didn't. Nobody leads, nobody mentors, nobody even seems interested in talking to me. My manager has never asked if I need anything or how I'm doing. That's not leadership. That's just someone occupying a title. I'm not staying where I'm invisible.

There is a free Claude partner certification voucher campaign ongoing for dxc employee (ending 31 Aug 2026).

If you are eligible, go claim it.

Workplace excellence often ends up meaning:

looking good
sounding good
being visible
being “aligned”
being socially smooth
fitting the corporate narrative
participating in culture, meetings, rituals

It’s about optics and behavior inside the system.

Work excellence usually means:

delivering results
doing the hard work
solving the real problems
carrying the load
improving the bottom line

It’s about actual output and impact.

Enough people around Stankey have finally gotten in his ear and policy changes are in the works. Senior HR leadership is preparing to roll it out in the next 6-12 months.

It will be presented as a "change to presence report requirements."

It will most likely involve quarterly presence requirements instead of weekly, with some (probably not a ton) of leeway for occasional work from home.

The biggest factor motivating the change is problems attracting and retaining new hires - especially younger workers.

Nobody will tell Stankey directly that he was wrong, but it's being couched as "You've done an amazing job transforming our culture! We're ready to take the next step now."

He's bought into that.

Did everyone enjoy the training on employee disengagement?

How can SAS expect people to be highly engaged when it's clear company goals won't be met which means smaller or no bonuses, fewer or no promotions or raises.... more money for the big cheeses and endless building up of interns and enthusiasm for hiring young people but none of either for anyone else.

Yay SAS.

Do you have a best friend at work?

Sadly many people I thought were a friend fail to stay in contact or even attempt to maintain any links or connection once transferred. If you aren’t useful to them they have no time for you.

This was posted on LinkedIn on 8/18/2026 under "O'Reilly Auto Parts India". If you're an O'Reilly IT employee, does this concern you?

For nearly 70 years, O'Reilly Auto Parts has been helping our customers keep their vehicles on the road. Today, we're building our next tech home in Bengaluru, India, the same way we've always built: through people, culture, and the belief that the best way to grow is from within.​

Welcome to O'Reilly Auto Parts India. We're excited for the journey ahead and hope you’ll join us for the adventure. ​

100s of them remote netflix all day for months, 6 fig with bonus

Pros
Fewer annual reorgs
More 3%+ merit (no 1-2%)

Cons
You'd have a handful of folks "advocating" for you that would have to be elected every 2-3 years
You'd give up 1% of your base annual salary

Thumbs up if you like it. Thumbs down if you don't

There’s a point where “culture” stops being what a company says on LinkedIn and becomes what people actually experience when they work there.
You can post all the polished messages you want about people-first leadership, growth, transparency, and culture—but saying those things doesn’t make them true. Culture is reflected in who gets listened to, who gets protected, who gets developed, who gets held accountable, and ultimately, who chooses to stay.
If leadership continues asking the same small circle of people whether everything is okay—and those people are the ones benefiting from the current system—of course the answer is going to be yes. But that is an incredibly narrow way to measure the health of an organization, especially one that desperately needs to right the ship.
At some point, leadership has to get uncomfortable enough to actually listen. Not just to the loudest voices, the favorites, the “yes” people, or the people sitting closest to power. Talk to the people who left. Talk to the people who stopped speaking up. Look at retention. Look at engagement. Look at production beyond the surface-level numbers. Look at what happened to the travelers and relationships that were handed off to people celebrated as “top performers.” Did those relationships grow? Did those travelers stay? Were those desks actually nurtured—or were they simply inherited?
And if the same people have been sitting in leadership seats for three years while the same problems continue to surface, it is fair to ask whether the problem is no longer the circumstances—it’s the people in the seats.
Leadership should not be a talking head. It should not be gossip, cliques, politics, favoritism, or protecting the people you personally like. Leadership means fighting for your people, advocating when it is uncomfortable, holding everyone to the same standard, and having the courage to admit when something isn’t working.
Stop fluffing certain desks while demanding everyone else prove themselves over and over again. Stop celebrating numbers without examining how they were achieved or what happens after the handoff. Stop confusing loyalty to a leadership circle with loyalty to the company.
Three years is enough time to make meaningful change.
At some point, continuing to do the same things, empowering the same people, protecting the same behaviors, and expecting a different outcome becomes exactly what we all know it is: insanity.
What makes this particularly sad is that this company once talked so passionately about being different. About putting people first. About creating something better than the corporate environments so many people had experienced elsewhere.
Somewhere along the way, it started becoming the very thing it said it would never become.
Profits matter. Performance matters. Growth matters. But people have to matter too.
And when good people continue walking out the door, leadership shouldn’t be asking how to improve the messaging around culture.
They should be asking what happened to it.

This is what leadership and success look like! All bow down to greatness!

I wonder, if eventually, this forum of associate honesty would inspire change by the top 4 or 5 leadership positions. Change that they would claim as their smart thinking, and result in a bigger compensation, bonus, reward.

I highly recommend to fill out the CES that was sent out and make sure to put in comments. I am not sure how much ELT will care about these, but they at least get shared out in meetings with results and that has some importance.

What is our true Enbridge culture?

I was asked to become a Culture Ambassador a while back and, admittedly, was skeptical, I’ve never fully trusted HR initiatives that claim to gather grassroots input. A recent meeting has me genuinely reflecting on what our actual culture is at Enbridge, as opposed to the aspirational one we often describe. I’d be interested to hear others’ perspectives.

Go!

It's happening folks, enjoy the weekend.

Love using this AI to do all the required trainings for Centene.

Pretty wild that we have to take a quiz on the company strategy. The same strategy that took 4 hours to even explain. Does he really think we are that stupid? 😆

When the Storm Hits, Stand Tall

I know there is anger. I know there is confusion. I know there are people walking into this week carrying disappointment, fear, and a whole lot of unanswered questions.

Layoffs hurt. Watching positions disappear and seeing people you respect suddenly face uncertainty is hard. And honestly, it is hard not to want to lash out.

But as we walk through this storm, remember something: you are bigger than this moment.

Take the knowledge you gained. Take the experience. Take every challenge you overcame and every lesson you learned, and use it to build what comes next.

It is okay to be angry. It is okay to be hurt. Acknowledge those feelings, but don’t let bitterness become the thing that carries you forward.

Because bitterness doesn’t hurt the company. It doesn’t change the decisions that were made. It only weighs down you.

So show the world what you are made of.

Be the leader. Be the supervisor. Be the mentor. Be the coworker who reaches back and helps someone else stand up. Be the strength that so many of us have already seen in you.

Hold onto something during this difficult time. Your experience. Your character. Your family. Your faith. Your dreams. Your next opportunity. Whatever gives you a reason to keep moving forward.

And remember: sometimes a company’s loss becomes the beginning of your greatest opportunity.

They may have made a decision about a position, but they do not get to decide your worth, your future, or what you are capable of becoming.

We are stronger than the anger.
We are stronger than the disappointment.
We are stronger than this storm.

Let them have the corporate game. We’ll take the lessons, keep our integrity, and build something better.

Hold your head high. Keep moving forward. And when you come out on the other side of this, make sure you recognize the person who refused to let a difficult chapter define the rest of the story. ❤️

When I first joined, there was a real sense that people cared about the work and about each other. That's mostly disappeared now. Years of changes have completely stripped away whatever it was that made the place special, and we're now at the point where loyalty and experience don't count for much. It's depressing watching a company lose the culture that made people want to stay.

The office is like old folks home it’s an aging firm where nobody has the drive to push for innovation because of long service. Everyone is slacked any new projects or ideas quickly get throw out the window. Network / Data firm but it’s very outdated .
Need new blood transfusion of workforce before too late.

From corp to field, how many ppl were hired recently?
Given the recent revenue and profit increases, lead by increasing customer satisfaction, I see lots of new employees in stores nearby!
Just curious

Not surprising, though. New people don't get trained properly, can't keep up, and run for the door before the three-month mark hits. When will they realize that training people properly will benefit both the company and those of us who won't have to neglect our own jobs to help them out.

Are you feeling connected? Energized? Valued?

Do you feel as though your L21 efforts are improving things for our customers?

Today at the office in Tempe they were going to have a pizza party for the upcoming conversion and everyone both in office and remote declined attending. It is kinda sad and funny.