White Company with a lot of collateral damage on the way to unconvincing "Inclusion" - Senior Software Engineer PostNL Employee Review

A lot of distrust culture. Lack of cohesion. Mostly covert but also overt discrimination. Lack of empathy at the management layer. I would not recommend it to English-speaking people, even though you may be OK with a limited number of teams regarding overt discrimination and cultural superiority complex/bias. Covert will still be around. There is still quite a long way (I would say 5 to 10 years with this speed, maybe even longer) for PostNL to foster an inclusive, non-biased, non-discriminative environment. At least at an acceptable level. I understand it is hard to do; however, the best way to create this environment is not to bury if someone is raising their hand about discrimination, exclusion, and bullying. PostNL does not have proper mechanisms to protect you and your psychological health from overt/covert discrimination. I have personally experienced a lot of covert, some conscious, some unconscious discrimination, next to some blatant, overt discrimination. I escalated the issue to my manager, who started attacking me directly and indirectly, using/exaggerating my weak points/pitfalls (I have them as a human) and devaluing my contribution to the team. He also played a lot of guilt and shame-trapping games with a smear campaign with his flying monkeys, which made me decide to take more severe actions to protect myself and my psyche. I escalated this to HR and the vertrouwenspersoon of the department I was working at. It got buried: When I asked to talk to the vertrouwenspersoon of the company, I was discouraged by the "vertrouwenspersoon of the department" (not sure what that means). Don't be discouraged, talk to the vertrouwenpersoon of the company. Resist if they try to frame it as a professional friction which is very likely. I first did not want to escalate the issue, which I did in a similar situation in the past (I have a low tolerance for this type of behavior). First, it is mentally consuming. Second, if you fight them, you make life-long enemies like I do have one now from an old project/company (Mr. J. ), and third I did not want to create more polarisation in the company for ex-pats already working there. Last and most importantly, it is hard to prove, especially the covert ones. But the company did not arrange a mediator for four months and ditched me, then I decided to escalate the issue as I also had some facts that could prove my point. There is also a second thing related to this matter. This is something I can not be %100 sure of, nor something I can prove. Still, I had some conversations and observations that made me think that at least a small group of people strategically put extra effort into the career advancement of a "specific" group at the expense of the company and other minority groups. They even position themselves as very open-minded and expat-friendly. But they simply don't walk the talk. If the company wants to prevent this, I think there should be more managers with high integrity and empathy (more like leaders) in the company. If you are technical, I would not work there before seeing that happen. I think these are significant issues PostNL needs to address. Cultural superiority complex/bias and toxic (unhealthy) competition culture are historical luggage that the company has. Mostly covert but also overt discrimination is also more widely present than the higher management is willing to accept as a result of common cultural stereotypes and prejudices. Maybe they(higher management) simply buy some time with excuses (justifications and denial) and do not contribute to the real solution of the problem other than having token hires and using "HR-Marketing". I know the issue is complex; however, based on my personal experiences, I am leaning more toward this possibility, as you can imagine. Eventually, I had to go on sick leave. People who I complained about and the people who protected them(even acted together) are still working very comfortably there in critical positions. But even if they are forced to do something and let them go, looks like they rehire them later in different capacities. If you have to work there, embrace the covert discrimination and try to connect with decent and non-biased people (who certainly exist in the company). But be aware that you may not find many in the management layer. Most importantly, do not hesitate to raise your discrimination/bullying case written in the email, as I mistakenly over-trusted some of the managers and only communicated verbally but on the way to fixing my naivety. If you do not want to end up as collateral damage, chase your complaint. And do not expect too much as PostNL systematically does not take discrimination complaints seriously. Raise it also to independent anti-discrimination organizations and even chase legally if you have legal insurance.