#trust

May 1st will be a new beginning and fresh start for fiber. Arium & Zayos paths are uncertain but they have a future good or bad. Crown however, is damaged and the trust has been broken every Crown employee will be looking over his or her shoulders for next layoff for years to come

I’ve been in a work environment where leadership is often framed as “shared,” with the message that everyone is leading. In reality, it doesn’t feel that way.

There’s a pattern of conversations being guided toward a preferred outcome, where input is less about open collaboration and more about aligning with what’s already been decided. It creates the impression of shared leadership, but often feels like managed agreement.

When someone has the authority to make decisions but avoids clearly owning them, it shifts responsibility onto others and creates confusion around accountability. Over time, it makes it harder to trust the process or feel that input is genuinely valued.

Strong leadership isn’t about telling people what they want to hear or steering them to a specific answer — it’s about transparency, ownership, and honest communication, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Curious if others have experienced similar

A new CEOWORLD magazine study surveyed 125,000 full-time U.S. employees. Most employees believe return-to-office mandates are "stealth layoffs." 72% suspect these policies aim to cut headcount without severance. Many workers engage in "coffee badging" or seek new jobs from the office. Strict monitoring correlates with lower trust, especially among Gen Z.

https://ceoworld.biz/2026/03/18/report-stealth-layoffs-and-coffee-badging-what-125000-u-s-employees-reveal-about-rto-mandates/

Things were kept under wraps for a while but now your Band 5 leader now knows what’s going down…they have to choose who is going to be riffed…who will sink or swim. Don’t trust a single thing they say…

HR will protect the company not you

1. Do you agree that the information contained in the database associates your name with your survey responses? If so, then by definition it is NOT anonymous.

2. Do you agree that the unique link helps ensure that people don't take the survey twice? But in so doing, do you also agree that the unique link is also stored in the database, which associates your name with your survey responses? If so, then by definition it is NOT anonymous.

3. Do you agree that Dell could retrieve your information if they ever needed to for things like legal discovery, etc? For example, if someone said something really stupid like made a threat or something, which has happened before. If so, then by definition it is NOT anonymous.

4. Do you trust Dell HR and/or Dell leadership?

True anonymity severs any PII between the user, user ID, employee number, etc., from existence. It never creates it in the first place - i.e., no logs, no db entry, no links, no memory, nada. That's not the case here by virtue of the way it is created, distributed, and stored.

As to whether the 3rd party who manages the survey would give up that information, that's an entirely different discussion altogether.

But it is NOT anonymous by definition, End of Story.

Real leaders don’t smile while destroying lives. Real leaders don’t look their employees in the eye and lie about the EMEA strategy for six months.
You’ve spent half a year dodging responsibility and expecting us to work "business as usual" while you plotted this behind our backs. You threw the Credo and its principles in the trash the moment they became inconvenient. Do you actually think we’re stupid? These aren't just "headcounts"—these are families, mortgages, and lives at stake.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking: You announce a reorganization on Wednesday, and by Thursday, you have the nerve to tell us you’re "confident we’ll continue to give our all."
The trust is dead. You’ve broken it beyond repair. You can't execute people one day and demand their passion the next. You should be ashamed of your cowardice.
Make no mistake: it is now Us vs. You.
We were the lifeblood of this company. We are the ones who built what you are currently dismantling. You celebrated us yesterday only to betray us today. You have no honor, no backbone, no strategy, and—clearly—no soul. You aren't leaders; you’re just pathetic puppets.
Despite your total lack of integrity, we have a professional conscience. We will continue to deliver our best for our clients and our colleagues—not for you, but because our ethics are something you could never understand.

After 20+ years at Verizon, I’ve never seen morale this low or trust in leadership this broken.

Yesterday’s EMEA call was a brutal reminder of where things really stand. Yet today we’re all expected to log in, smile on calls, and carry on as if nothing happened.

What makes it worse is the constant stream of polished messaging from management and our Exec team that feels completely disconnected from reality. We’re told everything is about “transformation,” “strategy,” and “opportunities,” while RIFs happen all the time and the remaining staff are expected to absorb the work.

I feel like we’re being gaslighted.

Everyone knows AI is coming and it will fundamentally change large parts of the workforce and remove even more jobs at a rate much higher than we've known before. Employees aren’t stupid. Most of us have decades of experience and can see exactly what’s happening.

What’s astonishing is the apparent belief from leadership that the workforce will just nod along and accept whatever narrative is being presented.

After more than two decades here, I’ve never seen this level of distrust between employees and leadership. People can deal with tough decisions and difficult change. What they struggle with is the feeling that the truth is being managed rather than communicated.

Right now, the biggest gap in this company isn’t technology or strategy. It’s credibility.

When EH first came on, he mentioned how Nike would be turning a new page and lay offs wouldn’t be like the past. More of a restructuring of roles rather than saying goodbye to teammates. Since then, it’s been lay-off after layoffs, more than the JD era it seems. And even with all these lay offs, the stock is lower than it’s ever been. Maybe he was just blowing smoke up our as--s, but makes it hard to trust leadership when they do the opposite of what they promise and then also kicks our stock/part of our pay in the gonads. Just get a double whammy.

The big AI companies have been talking for two years about their plans to build huge data centers worth trillions of dollars. Any sensible person could understand that they would empty all inventory of computing components, memory and data storage. Cisco did nothing about this and woke up in complete panic only about two months ago. The trust and confidence of partners in Cisco is in a state of collapse and the long-term damage is enormous.

Dear Citi,
Trust is very costly feeling it’s difficult to gain and easy to loose. You and Managers are loosing that,No employee trust manager here.

on the ask me anything session. Here's a summary:
"blah blah, strategic blah blah excited, blah blah Ai, blah blah blah No Layoffs"

So hard to believe any of this, the actions of the past years do nothing to support them. The leaders are powerless, only Christian, Dominik and S/O have the power and make the cuts.

Is there any good that comes out of the One Voice survey or is it one of those 'going the motion' things. And nothing comes of it.

I filled it out today and in good conscience, could not give very many positive marks.

i don't trust my manager and in fact I would love a different one. No training, no opportunity for advancement or to improve oneself. In fact, just the opposite. You're intentionally blocked or side-railed at every opportunity by those above you.

Mileage may vary depending on your position and location within the organization. So I can only speak on my particular situation. My area offers career su----e as the only opportunity.

Just focus on your work. We will make sure you will be fired at the right time. We will push you to complete work by March and June, etc., but you assume you are safe even when your peer is laid off. Be honest at your work even when your manager hides that you will be moved or laid off in the next few months and talks with you simply face to face, thinking he is making a fool of you and making you work. Still, just focus on your work and assume everything is fine around you till your manager says you are done.

The real issue isn’t just layoffs, it’s trust.

When cuts happen and communication feels vague, people lose confidence fast. Add tighter return-to-office rules on top of that, and it can feel like control is going up while security is going down.

WFH flexibility isn’t just a perk. It’s a signal. It says: “We trust you to deliver.” Being super prescriptive with attendance dashboards and badge monitoring sends the opposite message.

If leadership wants to retain the best talent, they must listen actively to the needs of the incoming generations who are screaming to balance their life needs better then previous generations. It comes down to a few basics:

• Be clear about what’s happening and why
• Be consistent between words and actions
• Trust people to do their jobs
• Push the flexibility policy more and stand behind it

Layoffs test culture. Culture eats all strategy (even the best ones designed by DW). Flexibility and transparency are how this company will succeed or fail. It’s too late for me because I made my decision so I leave this for the new hires coming in to witness.

Your move, DW

Regarding Kevin's meeting and the effort he's making for employees. Kevin just sold $1,000,000 worth of stock. Do not trust them. They are trying to keep you productive up until they can discard you.

Dell has changed, they are no longer the company we once knew and loved.

When a system shifts risk to employees, the experience changes and the job starts to su-k more.

Stress becomes structural, not situational

The math starts working against the us

Even big wins can feel diluted

Over time, effort and reward drift apart, and trust in the model breaks down.

Great sales organizations create environments where performance, ownership, and outcomes stay aligned. When that alignment exists, people do their best work.

We have to ask ourselves, are we doing our best work or just trying to survive a broken system?

If it was a critical or life or death situation would our ELT be capable of telling the truth even once? I dont think any of the C-Suite "leaders" could even tell the truth about the color of the sky. Our "leadership" is rotten to the core and MW ruined the bunch!

The management and executives here are untrustworthy. They've broken just about every rule and unwritten rule possible with directs. They're the type who give you prop's the entire year and then give you a bad year end review so they can cheat you on your bonus to make some budget number. As a shareholder i've super disappointed in the place and plan to sell my stock holding in this company, and its a sizeable figure.

Since I'm leaving, figured I'd share what I wish I'd known. Don't trust promises from above. Keep receipts because people will throw you under the bus. Management won't protect you. HR protects the company. Have a good life.

In high-trust societies, people assume good intent. Information flows freely. Collaboration feels natural. In low-trust systems, the opposite happens: people protect themselves first. Energy shifts from building to guarding.

Consider modern Russia. Decades of opacity and centralized control have cultivated widespread skepticism toward institutions. Citizens often rely on private networks rather than public systems. Information is filtered. Incentives are distorted. When trust erodes, talent adapts by becoming cautious, political, and self-protective.

Our corporate environment shows similar warning signs. Competitive ranking systems pit colleagues against each other. Information becomes currency. Feedback is filtered for safety rather than truth. Instead of asking, “How do we win together?” people ask, “How do I avoid losing?” Innovation slows because risk feels dangerous. Collaboration weakens because vulnerability feels unsafe.

Over time, this trajectory leads to silos, quiet disengagement, and eventually mediocrity. High performers optimize for optics. Emerging leaders learn to manage perception instead of outcomes. Trust, once depleted, is expensive to rebuild.

If we continue reinforcing internal competition over shared success, we shouldn’t be surprised when initiative declines and politics rise (and one may say that we are already there). But the reverse is also true: when trust increases, performance compounds.

The future of our company will not be determined by strategy alone, but by whether we choose fear-based competition or trust-based collaboration. We sit in a moment when the system to identify future Management is hindering the ability to run the organization. Perhaps its time to not burden the majority of the organization with PDS classifications and let them operate with a stable performance reward system. No system is great but we sit in a time of history where a credible change is necessary.

They always want us to be all in, committed, loyal. But when it's convenient for them, we're just numbers on a spreadsheet. Don't preach teamwork and family to me when you treat people like this.

Store Manager/RXM bonus this year is 75% based on "company numbers" that this private company controls and self reports.

Only 25% of the bonus is based on your store or pharmacy.

Do you trust Sycamore?

Have they been transparent and trustworthy?

Their #1 goal is IPO and staging the numbers for the underwriters that determine their IPO value.

Low expenses and cutting payroll helps them accomplish their goal.

The best employees in the world are trusted to work where they want, when they want, and how they want. Not because no one is watching, but because they’re capable adults with talent, character, and integrity. When you hire people like that and give them autonomy, they consistently deliver more than any mandate ever will.

A five-day RTO policy sends the opposite signal. It tells top performers they aren’t trusted. And they respond the way the market always does, they leave. What’s left is a shrinking, less competitive talent pool made up of people with fewer options, the bottom quartile of talent.

If connectivity and flexibility are truly our product, we should be the company that proves it works, not the one that contradicts its own message.

I have been severely overwhelmed at work the last 2 years. Drowning in legal issues and compliance stuff and roughly 2 x the workload of next coworker...I got an inconsistently meets this year after pushing back on workload and other things...I don't think they would fire me as who would deal with it but anyone else having that issue? How can I continue to do it and not get paid enough or have any trust with management?

I know it's just a week left, but I don't trust them anymore so it wouldn't surprise me if they sprung something else on us.

Yes — that’s a strong, constructive addition. Here’s a refined version that incorporates true partnership while staying concise, professional, and safely anonymous:

⸻
The most effective HR professionals retain humility and humanity. They remain genuinely curious about people while responsibly balancing associate needs with business priorities.

They recognize that perceived respect often stems from the power of the role—not individual superiority—and they do not treat access to privileged information as status. They engage others as true partners, fostering collaboration rather than control, which makes the work more engaging and effective.

They exercise independent judgment, avoid unquestioning alignment with leadership, and actively check personal bias. This balance is what builds trust, credibility, and long-term organizational health.

Consider everyone a competitor, not a coworker. I trusted someone and they used it against me to look better. Its every person for themselves.

I’ve participated in ESPP for several years, and the lack of a consistent strategy is becoming hard to ignore.

Leadership keeps reacting on short-term measures instead of planning; repeated layoffs every few months erode trust internally and externally.

It’s time for a proactive plan that lasts longer than a calendar quarter. Credibility matters.

How many have spent the weekend checking email for a meeting maker. Side tracking life while foreign interests and foreign nationals pervert data to show a better story then may be the truth. Leaders get to take the money and run. You should too. The rainbow washing, green washing, virtue signaling it was never about culture or employees it was about revenue generation.

I read an article about a company that recently replaced its CEO. The new CEO was asked how he planned to gain the trust of employees. I laughed, thinking about how Scharf had the same opportunity to improve the lives of 260,000 people and chose betrayal instead.

What is up with the news? About 10K jobs have been eliminated this month (January) and not a single news article, posting, etc. anywhere... where are the biz reporters?

How can anyone trust the news and media when a story like this doesn't even make the LinkedIn news feed?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I've heard from several corp. colleagues that this movo company has been contracted by 3M. Here's the website: https://movo.co/

If so, this would mean all trust is gone.

Can someone comment if this is true?

I’m genuinely surprised by the rumors of a Talk to Chuck reboot.

IIRC, the original campaign launched 20 years ago as a marketing initiative built on trust, integrity, and Chuck being approachable and aligned with everyday investors.

Hard to see how that message works the same today??

With George retiring, and him PROMISING the engineering department that “BUDGET IS LOCKED FOR 2026…I have spoken to Paul Gaske and there will be no future layoffs in the coming months”, THEY SHOULD stick to their word…

George AND Paul should do everything in their power to not let engineering layoffs happen in these first 2 quarters…….George has to protect his reputation in this company and industry…..if he allows layoffs, Paul Gaske would be looked down by everyone at the company by lying to George if there is another round of layoffs…… Employees are not d-mb…..we DO NOT like being lied to……
This will tarnish George’s legacy in everyone’s mind in the WHOLE INDUSTRY if there is another round of layoffs in this quarter……what a horrible way to retire with everyone hating you…. Paul & George do better…. Do NOT hold town halls to lie to us…..

It’s hard to understand how a company with HPE’s scale and portfolio continues to struggle to create momentum, and from the inside it feels less market driven and more internal. Constant restructuring, added complexity from acquisitions, and unclear accountability have worn people down. The recent layoffs were especially difficult because they didn’t feel strictly performance based, many capable, respected employees were impacted while leadership structures stayed largely unchanged, which made the process feel political rather than strategic. That disconnect has hurt morale and trust, and at this point the challenges feel structural, even a strong, proven leader like Rami stepping in as CEO wouldn’t be able to fix this without deeper changes in how decisions are made at the top.

Some folks are being offered roles with their supervisors saying “don’t worry this won’t be the actual job when the time comes, we’ll get you something better” or “no worries, this says same CL, but you’ll likely get a CL increase next year.

Do not trust any verbal commentary that does not make it into a written guarantee whether in the offer letter or an email from your supervisor that you review with a lawyer. Now is not the time to believe some wishful hypotheticals. Now is the time to trust no one except the piece of paper that your lawyer explains to you and you are comfortable with.

Only assume they will give you what the offer letter says.

Also, if your offered job starts in 2027, assume that you may not get a salary increase Jan 1, 2027. Ie same pay all of 2026 and 2027.

Over the past two years, T‑Mobile employees have been operating in a near‑constant state of transition. Frequent reorganizations, unannounced job eliminations, and shifting priorities have created an environment where stability is the exception rather than the norm. This instability has eroded the sense of security employees once felt in their roles and has fundamentally changed how they experience their work.

Employees consistently hear that “our people are what make T‑Mobile special” and that this is a place to build a career, not just a job. Yet the company’s actions — particularly the elimination of high‑performing employees who were previously recognized as role models — directly contradict those messages. Individuals who were celebrated, mentored, and held up as examples of the company’s future have been let go without transparent communication or meaningful attempts at repositioning.

This disconnect between words and actions has created a deep cultural fracture.

The most recent layoffs intensified this sentiment. They were not clearly announced, leaving employees to piece together who was impacted and why. In the same conversations where employees were told how valued they are, they were also informed that more “duplication removal” and organizational changes are coming. The result is a workforce that feels misled, unprotected, and uncertain about its future.

The emotional impact is significant. Employees who once demonstrated extraordinary ownership and commitment — who would “do whatever it takes” — now question whether that level of dedication matters. When high performance is no longer a differentiator in job security, the spirit that once fueled T‑Mobile’s culture begins to fade. Instead of feeling like they are building a career, employees increasingly feel like they simply have a job.

This is not a matter of resistance to change. It is a matter of trust.
And trust, once lost, is difficult to rebuild.

If T‑Mobile is to preserve the culture that has long differentiated it, leadership must acknowledge the gap between messaging and lived experience, communicate with transparency, and demonstrate through action — not rhetoric — that employees truly are the company’s greatest asset.

The holiday break gave time for me to see how really bad it can be working at Boeing. I worked in three different Boeing groups last year and the common denominator was toxic.
Nobody in any of these groups I worked in, seemed happy to work at Boeing. There was zero trust among co-workers in all these groups. The older guys always had a target on their backs. Lots of people rather see others fail, thinking it benefitted them.
So, I'm putting in my one week notice on Monday.

I'm still not convinced Dan is a bad thing for this place. I think it'll just take some time and pain to get where he needs to be to see the positives. I could be wrong, but I'd rather wait to make my judgement than make it right away and proceed to stress over things I can't change.