Things started going rapidly downhill about 18 months ago. If you have taken the time to apply for an advertised role do not hold your breath – there is a hiring freeze in place – which no one is allowed to talk about. When that is lifted, whatever you do, DO NOT take a contract role even if you are told ‘we hire everyone like this. You do 1 year and then convert to full time’. I have seen 1 role converted in the last 3 years.
Poor morale and care of people:
a. 2 senior leaders and celebrated marketers DEMOTED whilst on MATERNITY LEAVE and upon return effectively being ghosted.
b. The rise of cronyism – more examples than I can count of unadvertised roles being filled with semi or incompetent ‘yes’ people ‘connected’ to someone on the LT.
c. Starting to quietly let go much of the contract staff during the pandemic shutdown, despite telling the market we are supporting all of our staff from hourly workers to Full Time Employees. It is mainly the mid level managers being asked to have the conversations and none of us have line of sight to the total number being let go. We know it will be virtually impossible for these loved and competent people to find another role in this economic environment.
d. LT firmly believe and do articulate that 'everyone is replaceable'.
Zero leadership in APAC or medium/long term strategy.
The leadership team spend their time looking at the business with, at best, a 15week horizon. They have no understanding of the actual sales cycles or which marketing levers impact the pipeline and revenue numbers – let alone how the ‘workers’ actually activate those levers. The LT do not understand what we sell or even the product variations between countries. Makes for some interesting decisions. And worse they are not interested in the advice of the broader, very experienced employee base. They encourage data illiteracy in new hires, discourage numbers based conversations and information sharing – in fact they now discourage any discussion about marketing strategy, activity or investment options at all. If you are not on the LT your ideas or opinion no longer count and the bulk of us now just do what we are told, when we are told, how we are told. People create and innovate almost in hiding and share only once they have got some results - leading to duplication of effort and increased silos.
Lack of customer focus.
We’ve removed anyone in marketing that actively supports ‘customers’. And we wonder why we have a retention issue.
