Get comfortable, this is going to be long.
-Granicus looks like a polished company from the outside but it's actually an absolute dumpster fire that everyone should avoid (prospective clients included). Once you're on the inside, you see that it's just a bunch of smaller acquired companies that leadership is trying to squish together long enough to make it to the next PE round, at which point the C suite and many VPs will leave, dumping a mess of acquired companies held together by employees in low-cost geos doing the day-to-day work.
-The HR department is horrible. Many HRBPs are extremely unorganized and constantly mix up employees with similar or same last names. Employees frequently appear on the wrong org chart because the HRBP can’t keep departments straight. HR fails to notify employees of acquired companies of the proper 401k blackout dates, even going so far as to tell staff “the letter must have gotten lost in the mail.” When they don’t submit benefit paperwork on time, they prefer to blame the vendor for delaying insurance that should have gone into effect 1/1 rather than owning the mistake. A quick call to the vendor always confirms the issue was on the Granicus side.
-Exit interviews are a joke. When asked who reviews the data from the interviews themselves, the info only stays with the HRBP.
-A very small portion of the Granicus business requires a FedRAMP certification. For this reason, INSANE IT/security measures are in place for ALL Granicus employees. This limits websites you can visit, tools you can download, etc. For some departments, these restrictions can make it extremely difficult to fulfill client work quickly and efficiently.
-Senior leadership is very quick to dismiss poor employee engagement survey results by saying things like “We shouldn’t have included that org during this round” or “That group always responds negatively.”
-The CEO has made it very clear that they will do anything and everything the US president requires of them in order to maintain their government contractor status because protecting the business and revenue is their number one priority. The CEO has a weird obsession with Elon Musk, too.
-Granicus likes to acquire companies all the time, sometimes more than one in a year. Once the company is acquired, senior leadership dumps it on various teams to integrate aggressively. No time is spent getting to know the acquired company, their clients, or how they do business. They simply take that company and shove it into the Granicus mold as fast as they can, creating disasters every step of the way that the poor lower level managers and their teams have to clean up.
-Rather than focus on improving their offerings or improving client experience to then improve profit, Granicus prefers the typical cost-cutting measures including layoffs and offshoring staff to show decent returns to their investors. Offshoring work is probably their most-preferred method and is spearheaded by the CCO who has done this at all the other companies he worked at previously. It’s pretty ironic, considering Granicus works with primarily US-based governments and travel destinations. And then when clients complain about working with someone outside the US, senior leadership laughs and calls them complainers.
-Whenever possible they love to contract with employees rather than bringing them on full-time since it’s better for their bottom line and what the investors see. Some staff have been on contracts for years despite being told they would get moved to W2 status soon.
-Leadership, and even the company at large, is incredibly disrespectful of people’s time. Meetings are frequently cancelled only for them to get rescheduled with less than a 30 minute notice and you’re expected to drop what you’re doing and attend. An 8am Monday meeting gets scheduled EOD Friday, leaving you to prep over the weekend, only for the meeting to get cancelled 15 minutes before without an apology or acknowledgement of the time you spent prepping. You spend days working on a deck for an SLT meeting, only to never actually get to share it during the meeting because SLT decides a different topic should be the focus of the meeting three minutes into the call.
-Talent eval cycles have “suggested ranges for scores.” When it comes down to it, managers are forced to lower scores to comply with the “suggested” range that is actually a requirement, despite being told it was “suggested.”
-The CCO changes priorities for his leadership team constantly. One day his people are focusing on one task, and then 5 minutes later he throws another priority their way and they’re expected to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus.
-The recruitment team is a joke as they simply look for a warm body rather than quality candidates, or they funnel all their friends through every opening until they get hired. Recruiters’ only KPI is time to hire, again reinforcing the warm body approach.
-Employee-submitted questions during all-staff meetings are filtered so senior leadership can control the message at all times.
