I worked for an engineering and consulting firm for 5 years prior to starting my MBA. The company is consistently ranked high among other engineering/design, and environmental firms (Engineering News Record – 2010). On the outside the company’s image and reputation is very appealing to customers, clients, etc. However, from my experience the company’s internal reputation (i.e. employee perspective) is the opposite.
The firm had gone through many mergers and acquisitions over the years prior to my arrival; and it has been struggling with an internal identity ever since. The firm has approximately 100 offices with 3,000+ employees across the U.S., and each office has “battled” to keep their own identity and reputation. I have to give credit to the new CEO who has been trying to fix this problem since taking over in the past couple years. She has been realigning the firm’s divisions, offices, and personnel to better suit their client/customer’s needs, and requiring offices to comply with corporate policies.
Another area the firm is struggling with is employee retention. I don’t know the statistics, but it seems to me that the offices I’ve worked for had a relatively high employee turnover rate. Management has consistently failed to retain highly qualified individuals. Part of this is due to economic factors (furloughs, layoffs, etc.), but the majority of employees often see working for the company as just a stepping stone onto something else. There never appeared to be any loyalty among management and employees. Unless the firm changes its internal reputation, I do see some office divisions suffering. In many cases, I’ve seen projects sitting at a standstill because of employee turnover, and failed recruitment attempts at hiring new employees. “Word gets around and travels fast…”
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ReplyDeleteEmployee Relations is one of the biggest concerns an organization can have. It's important for your employees to respect the organization and actually want to work there. If your employees are unhappy, they will leave and if they leave, they will not hesitate to tell people the reason for their decision. Bad word of mouth can be like a chain letter, it starts off small but grows exponentially.
ReplyDeleteClearly this engineering and consulting firm has some deep problems that start at the roots of the company. Although it is a large corporation and may be appealing to clients, the employee relations and ultimately the infrastructure of the company seems to be crumbling. In order to have loyal hard working employees, a company must have an identity which they need to stand by. When management hires employees they need to look for qualities of honesty, loyalty and determination to fulfill the companies mission. By having a mission statement in place, the company can have the same goals and same focus across all of it's branchs. By changing the image of the company internally, and improving employee relations, the firm can concentrate more on completing jobs and supporting their clients which is their corporate responsibility. If the employees are happy and have good things to say about the company they work for, the word of mouth alone can be great for the reputation of the business. However, just as it can be good, it can also be bad as seen in the lack of employee retention at this firm. As the new CEO has already begun, this company needs to change from the inside out, starting with the employees.
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