Wested desperately needs a leadership makeover!
Pros
Fringe benefits, although some are being downgraded much to the chagrin of employees. Some great colleagues. We still retain flexibility in where and when to work. The company, to its credit, continues to allow most of us the ability to work 100% remotely. The IT infrastructure improved and allowed us to adapt to the pandemic and the Zoom world very quickly and effectively. To the company's credit, we did not implement the identical awful performance review system in 2025. We saved time, money and hurt feelings moving to “pass/fail” and avoiding the 1-5 number rating system.
Cons
HR is very poorly run and is not trusted by many rank and file staff. It needs a complete overhaul. Wested retains a bloated management structure and some unethical business practices. This company needs stronger fiscal stewardship and MUCH stronger leadership that prioritizes ethics and integrity. Leadership contradicts itself on an almost daily basis. It has been frustrating to get a straight answer about almost any issue from our leadership. A great example is leadership's explanations about staff terminations. We were told it was about the lack of coverage. But people with full coverage are being let go, and the projects they brought in are being taken from them and given to others. It's so antithetical to what we once stood for. Commitment to internal and external equity is now questioned by many of my colleagues, given how fast we caved to the federal Executive Orders. Was our post-George Floyd “allyship” and pledge to racial and social justice just a phony exercise? In contrast to our caving on DEI, the organization does lean very left ideologically. The few moderate to right-leaning folks in the company that I know have said they feel they don’t fit in. Some supervisors and managers need to be removed as they do little good and create a lot of harm. There doesn’t seem to be any selection criteria for putting them in people manager positions. And there seems to be no follow-up or concern about their performance as people managers by anyone, even when serious and consistent criticisms emerge. HR’s repuation is woeful in this regard and is perceived as always protecting management. No greater example of leadership hubris and self-protection than our first few rounds of layoffs, in which not one VP or SVP was let go. Leadership's message is “YOU are in this together”—and they seem to perpetually play a game of "do as we say and not as we do.” The way that some people are being terminated is very cruel. It is another great example of how this leadership’s actions do not match their words (i.e., “we really care about our people”).
