Talking to colleagues and hearing their plans to leave the company is common. A lot of people are frustrated and/or overwhelmed. New joiners might still get the excitement of the first months ( I believe most of the positive comments you see here came from the cohort of employees who joined at max one year ago), but as you get more tenure, you start realizing that there are better places to work for. From my perspective, the key cause of the downfall of our culture is the new type of leadership preached in the company, coming mainly from new leaders in high and middle management circles. Although I trust our leadership's technical competence, they fail to create a healthy work environment for their teams. I believe there is a new business-over-people approach they think is necessary for Personio to grow to the next level that harms our culture. Problem #1 - Blame it on the past without understanding the context We need to toughen up; I heard it a couple of times recently from certain leaders. According to the new leadership standards, toughening up means that your work is subpar. You either accept it is a fact and agree to have your impact downsized (e.g., fewer reports as a manager or work on a less critical project as an IC) or leave the company. Behind this approach is the idea from part of the new leadership that Personio problems come from the people who joined the company before. Although long-time employees should get accountable for bad decisions, it is crucial to understand the context that generated these outcomes instead of simply personifying the problems. Otherwise, you will "blame it on the past" and repeat the same mistakes. Unfortunately, I fear this more nuanced view is not the path the new leadership is willing to take. There is a feeling in the air that the "new" Personio doesn't need the "old" Personios. Which I find curious, as the "oldies" are the ones who brought this company from zero to almost nine billion dollars. It's pretty sad to see long-time employees who joined the company in the early days leaving Personio frustrated and/or disrespected. Despite all the challenges of working on an early-stage startup, these people built the foundation of our product and business. If the goal was changing the profile/seniority of our employee base, I expected it to be handled more sensitively. Problem #2 - Current change management is messing up with people's mental health Regarding the pace of priority changes, I don't see it as an issue, as some colleagues complain here on Glassdoor. It is part of working in a hypergrowth environment. You either embrace it or try finding a more stable company that fits your needs as an employee. I have seen these changes happen often since I joined the company a few years ago. However, recently, I started noticing something new we did not have before: people crying in meetings, burned-out colleagues, and people mentioning that now they need pills to sleep. I guess this stress level is less a product of the priority changes (as we had significant changes before without these awful effects on people) but more a consequence of how poorly the new leadership handled these changes with the team: - teams have a short time to adapt to new scenarios and are expected to share high-quality deliverables still; - not enough transparency when communicating to the team creates the perception that the info we got is not the complete picture. This feeling that there is more to come generates a lot of anxiety; - leadership rarely recognizes that some of these sudden changes are their fault. This might sound small, but it significantly impacts team morale. Having a leader who recognizes mistakes makes everyone much more supportive and willing to overthrow all the hassle that comes with changes. Instead, leadership opts to either not assume their error or, even worst, try to transform it into something positive: "Now you will work on this new thing. It differs 100% from your plan but is an exciting topic. I am sure you will have a lot of fun." No joke, I saw a leader using this approach after our team underwent at least four major changes during the last few months. You could see everyone's rolling their eyes after the sentence was said. This strategy of making things look more positive instead of having an honest conversation and fixing the problem is very annoying.
