Where do I even begin..... First, don't let all the new faces of "Diversity" hires fool you. I had worked at the company for three years and just recently started to see more minorities being hired in, even though a lot of them were coming in as contract workers first.
There is only one true person of color in upper management in the US and globally I believe there is one other person of color in a C-Suite level role. For a company that loves to talk about diversity and being an individual they really don't stand by this. There have been plenty of qualified people of color coming through the business; however I am here to tell you this company is truly great for WHITE FEMALES ONLY. I repeat WHITE FEMALES PLEASE APPLY, the way white women grow within the company is absolutely wild! Especially when you consider most of them can barely keep up with the tasks from their original positions. I was always trying to bring up diversity and being more inclusive, but they truly only care about bottom lines at the end of the day.
Management needs some serious training! They have barely any care about the members on their team and if you get stuck with a manager from another state or country, good luck. They need to provide their managers with more training for empathy, motivating a team, communication of priorities, mental health of team members, and creating a cohesive team unit. There are some great managers in the center however; they run few and far in-between. You are typically one of the lucky ones if you can get a more relaxed manager with an understanding of how to motivate a team, create a cohesive team, communicate priorities, actually explain whether they are happy with where you are at, performance wise,or if you could use some work in other areas, and make you feel as if your team can accomplish anything. I had a manager like this for about a year and a half and it was amazing! Our team was extremely close, we worked together to solve, not only our problems, but other team members problems, and we always put our best foot forward to show our manager he could believe in us. This to me was a great experience for not only teamwork, but also to develop skills because our manager allowed us to make decisions how we saw fit. Giving us more freedom in our relationships with other team members and allowing to grow in aspects of leadership and decision making.
As a black woman if you get placed on a team with a white woman manager you might as well learn to say yes m'am and no m'am along with a pleasant demeanor and keep it at that. You won't be allowed to speak up and when you do there will be a target on your back. It has happened to two other black women I knew personally who either spoke up about something they weren't sure about or didn't want to be super chummy with co-workers. Both were let go on pretenses they weren't completing their jobs well, however the reality was they didn't fit the "personality mold", which is funny for a company whose values are authenticity, bravery, distinction, and passion.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't happy to see the overall rating of this company has went down in a couple of years. This is a good stepping stone and that is really it. Especially when you consider majority of their tenured employees all left within the same six month period. I am talking like upwards of ten plus people, including upper management people, leaving the company with new faces and a feeling they don't offer much after of a couple of years of employment there.
