Morale sucks nearly all the time. They make us take an engagement survey every year, and brag about the results, but employees are generally miserable.
The recent outsourcing of the entire 20-person legal department has left massive gaps in knowledge, experience, and service. We now have to wait a minimum of a week to get a response from the outside law firm - and that's assuming we're allowed to contact them for assistance since it costs the company money each time we do. Most of the legal team had been with the company over 10 years ... a total waste of talent put in motion by a CEO who wanted to save a bit of money on the salary/benefits line. That whole team was overworked and underpaid, but still cranked out consistently high quality work inside of deadlines.
This is just the most recent bloodletting by the current CEO, Real Estate was outsourced ~four years ago (and then brought back not a year later), IT went out to Singapore a few years later, then Marketing and Legal (those two on the same day) in January. (To add insult to injury, outsourced individuals permitted to stay on during transitions frequently have to train their own replacements.) Everything is in terms of dollars, and no one is safe anymore.
Executive leadership talks a good game, but their tactics are ruthless - set people up to fail and then kick them when they're down. The CEO seems like a nice enough guy, but is as fake as Donald Trump's tan. He struts around grooming a much-maligned HR exec to take over, but soon enough, the general KinderCare population will realize the emperor has no clothes.
