There is a SCREAMING disconnect between the leadership team (VP and above) and the employees - ranging from company direction/strategy, RTIP, pay & bonus structure, and advancement opportunities.
Leadership - the new CEO, Laura should be fired. She has made new VP, SVP and EVP appointments that primarily consist of her previous connections and colleagues at CIBC. From appointments to the Board to new positions being created, Element is becoming CIBC and incredibly top-heavy. Those additional leadership layers have made communication around strategy and business initiatives almost impossible to the lower levels of the organization. The leaders are more focused on one-upping one another and staying in Laura's good graces rather than helping the teams below them succeed. A recent Town Hall consisted of Laura interviewing 2 new leaders about absolutely nothing, when employees wanted to hear, were HOPING to hear, some type of direction, some type of acknowledgement of what's been going on and recognizing that we, the employees, are NOT ok. It's like leadership is blind to what the employee is feeling/experiencing - which couldn't have been more obvious in the Employee Engagement survey results.
Employee Engagement survey results were disastrous. We tried to be open and honest about what was going on and how we were feeling. You would think that with scores like that, the EXE would have paused and said "what are WE doing wrong?". Instead what was said is "you managers are not doing a good job and therefore, your rating will not reflect the great work you have done this year, but instead, will reflect on how the survey results came back.". But those results didn't stop the EXE from getting larger rewards on their stock (keep reading).
Company direction and strategy - challenging environment when the company announces the creation of a division that will make most financial decisions based in Ireland. Those positions were filled with Canadian leaders (most were not posted and benefits were awarded to the friends of the new Ireland leader. There is unrest in the ranks as to who will be ultimately be making the decisions - Ireland or the US/Canada leadership team. So are we in Ireland to avoid taxes? Are we a federal contractor? Are we a rebiller or do we own the products and services? The strategies are unclear, but one thing is glaring - the tax team is pushing crazy agendas, which is contributing to the ambiguity and the creation of unattainable goals.
IT platforms - No clear direction on how to fund desperately needed projects to fix broken processes and outdated systems (ordering platform), but plenty of finger pointing at those who have worked on the project. Chances are, if you worked on the ordering platform you're no longer with the company. Stop and reset - focus on fixing one thing and not promising the world to customers.
Their way or the highway - you are no longer able to have a respectful disagreement or altering view from Laura or the EXE. If you do, you will be shown the door (literally). Our employees are raising their hands and their voices trying to make some headway with what's wrong. It's impacting customers, it's impacting the mental health of our employees and, at some point, will begin to impact our stock price in a negative way.
Return to In Person - a complete miss on leaderships part to recognize what they were losing by forcing this issue. There are stark differences on how managers are dealing with the policy - some enforcing hard and some offering flexibility to associates. HR and leadership offering no help but just continues to vomit the same message - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, no exceptions.
Pay and Bonus structure - Laura has no concept (or plain doesn't care) of what's happening when she gets on an investor call and says that Element had a record year and, due to that, was rewarding the EXE with a 2x multiplier on 75% of their long term incentive plan. This is after the employees dealt with impacted bonuses by poor employee engagement survey results, were told there were no merit increases or 1x payouts for some due to HR suddenly enforcing salary bands that no one knew existed, and others receiving such a low merit increase that it didn't even cover the increase in CPI. Who does Laura think made the "record year" possible??? The EXE should care about how the employees are feeling. If the mandate was for no merit increases then there should have been discussions from the VP's to the Directors and Managers about how to talk to the impacted employees and, a lump sum should have been considered for those employees. Better yet - the VP's should have had those discussions with the employees. It's not reasonable in any company to expect that an employee will never get another raise because they've hit an arbitrary pay scale band. Instead of rewarding the EXE for their hard work, Laura should be focused on rewarding the workers who are dealing with the day-to-day issues OR offer stock options to employees who have hit the ceiling of the pay scale band.
Advancement opportunities - remote employees being told they are no longer eligible for promotions unless they agree to come in to an office location and abide by the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mandate. VP, SVP positions being appointed and not posted. SVP positions being created out of thin air. Handpicking certain individuals for opportunities in Ireland. This is not the place to work if you want to advance past a Director. And, be careful what you wish for, because advancement comes with doing the job of multiple people without proper compensation, 60+ hour work weeks, working on vacations and weekends. If you are applying for a role at Element hopefully you are scrolling past the marketing and HR 5-star posts that are fake news.
