Hire and fire?
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Way they approach technology issues. They try to get solutions.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Communication, volatile bahaviour, unconstant plans. Hire and fire.
Verbesserungsvorschläge
Rethink your communication strategy, develop a clear go to market, don't blame others for your own omissions and lack of interest.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Colleagues are extremely under pressure and the management doesn't really care. Just talking nicely and promising things ... but no actions at all.
Kommunikation
Greenhorns ... I have the feeling that it is expected to people being able to read minds. Blaming others like: "you should have known that". Using uncountable plattforms of communications (chats, wiki, documentations ... and no one (relly noone) has a clue were to find official informations). Communication policy are just wanabe words. The communication principles on their webpage are just a mask. Neither Management nor employees stick on them.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
It's a helping attitude within the single teams. Unfortunately as soon as it comes to cross-team work (mainly to management, sales and HR) no team spirit.
Work-Life-Balance
Whats nice are the mostly flexible working hours.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
VSHN says "we do not have superiors". Unfortunately not true.
Management don't care and seem not to have the interest to improove stress levels or working quality. Since years already talking about the same topics over and over again. Management is only seeing their opinions. Taking notice about team's rumors, but at the end the one who screams the loudest gets a task. Decisions are not made by asking the employees, but because of asumptions (communication skills = 0).
Withing the Engineering Teams however, the manner and behaviour ist really good. You get only 1 Star bcs. of Management's way of conduct.
Interessante Aufgaben
New ways and chellenging tasks.
Gleichberechtigung
Often rude and unfair joking.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
Sallary way below IT's avarage.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
Good policy and education budgets.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Arbeitsbedingungen
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Image
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Dear former employee
Thank you for your comment. We are a bit disappointed that you didn't raise any of the points you are mentioning here in our various talks or with the respective people directly. Up until your last day, we gave you everything you needed to help and support you with your future without any discussion or questions. Without going into every detail, we want to give a statement to your claims, especially for any future VSHNeer who might be reading this here:
Hire & fire: the whole process with the employee which led to the termination of the employment contract took several months, including various meetings with affected people discussing specific issues or tensions and of course giving the former employee enough time to change things. Unfortunately, nothing led to any improvement of the situation. Close to 50 people are adhering to our Company Values (https://handbook.vshn.ch/values.html) and are living them, some more some a bit less. The important thing is, that we speak about issues and try hard to improve. In this case, the former employee had very different views especially on "Integrity" (blameless communication & being respectful and constructive and open to criticism) and "Accountability" (we do what we agreed to do and are taking ownership). If one person sees all this differently, that's totally fine, there's no right or wrong, it's just how we at VSHN agreed to work together. As in any relationship, after trying hard, there might come a point where there simply is not a fit, because one cannot expect 50 people to change because of one single person.
We’re organized in self-managing teams living by principles and patterns of Sociocracy 3.0, with only very few decisions left to the top level management, one of that being final hiring and firing decisions. We practice the Principle of Consent, which means that the power to influence shifts from people to reasoned arguments. In cases of a person not being a good fit, making such reasoned, objective decisions is hard as you can imagine. We can improve a lot on how we do this, still with involving the team of the former employee and their stakeholders to reach this decision, we’re sure it was the right decision.
There is a ton of unclear topics at VSHN, as in any company, there is also a ton of outdated documentation, even in our public Employee Handbook not everything is 100% up-to-date. But the thing is, most people at VSHN feel accountable, meaning in this case, being ready to take ownership to bring up and help fixing unclear things, or things that show a worthwhile way to improve or a risk that we would rather avoid. This former employee did not unfortunately, he fostered a blame culture instead.
One good example on how we see potential for improvement and make decisions with everyone affected is that we changed our salary system to become fairer and not to differentiate anymore between technical and non-technical employees. This was changed by the VSHNeers who worked on this topic and not by management.
The former employee also states that management does nothing to improve VSHNeers wellbeing and compensation. In general we would also say that this is far from the truth, just in the last 2 years, we decreased the weekly working hours, added additional holidays, changed the education budget to CHF 4000.- and 5 additional free days per year and the most important of all: you do not work any hour which is not recorded, even in non-technical positions. We also offer to help people personally, which can include psychological support and extended sick-leave payments. This alone is not enough though, we believe specifically that wellbeing starts with clarity about what you do, what you’re accountable for in a company, in your team, so that you can do the right thing, make an impact and grow in your role - here we’re missing some of this clarity. We’re working hard on this, directly with and in the teams - including the product management, sales and the top management - through governance facilitation and systemic coaching.
And also again here, it's not management telling people what to do, it's self-managing teams and every single VSHNeer sharing the overall accountability of the company. Blaming VSHN not caring about people is basically blaming 50 people.
We thank you for your feedback. If there is anything left you want to discuss with us, the door is always open.