It’s sad it has come to this; Vestas has become a really toxic and unpleasant place during my last few years. It has definitely changed – it used to feel like a family organization, but that feeling had gone. Office politics are rifle and the culture has changed; not for the better.
Management? There is no management. The regional Head hired to lead currently is inexperienced, narcissistic and tyranny. He has an informal approach and often to crack jokes at the expense of others. Most of the time these jokes are crude and inappropriate. He has established a senior leader team of ’yes men’ who flatter his ego, tell him what he wants to hear and play politics. These senior leaders are either incapable of making sound business decisions or are paralyzed by indecision. Some senior leaders are over-opinionated and underqualified for the roles they occupy; some of them wouldn’t get past the CV sift if they had to apply or their own jobs. You could easily take away the top tier of management and productivity wouldn’t change. There is no accountability at this level, no decision making and no consequences for being bad at your job – in fact, the more BS you talk the more you get rewarded. It’s an elite circle of people telling each other how great they are but the lower ranking staff have no faith in their abilities or intentions. The decisions that are made are mostly based on egos and not on what is best for the customers or the company. These inexperienced, self-righteous senior leaders are extremely biased, will only support and help certain staff. Qualified, experienced staff members are often overlooked for a few narcissistic unqualified individuals who think they know it all (and unfortunately the ones who make the loudest noise are often nothing more than empty vessels) but would be laughed at in any other companies. These loud members of staff are also the ones who are willing to massage the right egos. Unfortunately here, the only people who progress are those who play the favourites game.
Bullying of employees is a big problem and the Leaders are the biggest culprits. Local leadership is also insensitive, especially in HR. They aren’t looking for the right ways to do things, just the fastest and not necessarily the cheapest.
Global policies are implemented just for show and not comply to, especially by the local Leaders. A lot of unethical acts are committed by these Leaders, who are here to milk an easy wage from the company, especially the Regional Head, and making days go-by by manipulating and game playing, thereby increasing this toxic environment. The Senior leaders and extended leaders are always traveling to meet but no action and outcomes of meetings.
Unethical Human Resource Department. HR has too much power and abusing the term “retrenchment”. Using retrenchment as an excuse to terminate majority of the locals to replace them with transferees from Northern Europe offices or hire a particular Nationality that were recommended by the HR outsourced partner. Partners as well as one’s own nephew can be employed under the same department! Diversity is a myth; cronyism and nepotism is rifle.
People are promoted for political reasons, it doesn’t matter that they are known to be terrible leaders, backstabbing narcissists or incompetent – on the contrary, those seem to be what’s looked for in a leader. Career development is non-existent unless you are in a sales role.
In my well over a decade here, I have seen people from all over the world leaving the business after years because of this destabilizing workplace. We are bleeding top talents to our competitors and this will never make us number one in the industry. Long-serving leaders were also being let go all over the place, without any real explanation why; and those that aren’t being got rid of seem to be leaving in big numbers.