Most management above the base supervisor level is disconnected from the day to day functions and needs of employees. Decisions are without a clear understanding of their eventual impact.
Rapid changes in policy and expectations breed contempt and low morale from the front line employees.
Unkept promises with regards to work functions and load are taking a toll on employee loyalty.
Consistently bad resource planning means that, even if you've been 'promoted' into a position where you're dealing with higher value customers you're still getting inundated with general support contacts which then, in turn, lowers the effectiveness of your ability to support your own customer group by increasing wait times and creating an artificial urgency in getting people out of the contact so that you can move on to the next customer.
Apparent disdain for customers in general - making policies that are decidedly unfriendly to the seller populace and not being transparent with the reasons for doing so - providing talking points like "it's the cost of doing business" which does nothing to assuage the frustration and anger felt by long term incredibly high value members when they feel that they are being treated unfairly.
Dramatic shifts in expectations for work performance - going from "we don't care about your handle time" to "You must get your customers off the phone in an average of just over x minutes or else we'll start moving towards getting rid of you." is frustrating. Making these changes during the holiday season made morale take a nose dive and they're not doing anything to really discuss this, acknowledge it as a mistake, or make up for it in any way.
The sole value of an employee is their stats - handle time, customer sat, schedule adherence, etc... There is a growing feeling that teammates are merely cogs in a machine and that anything they do extra is seen as taking away from these stats and, while lip service is given to their benefit, no compensation or recognition is provided for that investment or engagement. This leads teammates to simply go in and do their work and leave.
There is no recognition for employees that take the time to learn more information about other lines of business and successfully apply that to their customer contacts. In fact, the more you know, the more crap they throw at you, so it's almost worth it to just stay at a base level. The pay is the same anyway.
There is no differentiation between sick time & paid time off. The standard line given is that eBay gives competitive PTO, which I guess is right, but you can't actually get sick without having the potential for some disciplinary action taking place. Other employers in the area have sick time and have built in policies for exceptionally short term (3 days or so) family care so you can take care of your sick kid. None of those things impact your attendance. With eBay, if you're sick and don't pre plan it, you get an occurrence. If you wrack up 3, you start to lose options for promotions and other benefits.
The culture has deteriorated over the course of the last several years. At first, this was the most fantastic place to work - even if customer contacts were frustrating, the management team had your back and there was a spirit of cooperation that was present at all levels of management. Now that cooperation is at the teammate level and everything higher than that discourages going out of your way to do the right thing for a customer or a peer.
What was once a refreshingly positive work environment and a company I could feel proud of is now a mere shadow of its former glory. It's going to take removing some senior leadership and replacing them with a strong leader with a vision of culture and organizational health and effectiveness to turn this around. I don't have high hopes.
