Active Micro-Management and Reprimanding for Small Mistakes Creates a Toxic Environment - Streaming Media Technician Roberts Communications Network Employee Review

Since I joined, the company culture has deteriorated significantly. What used to be a relaxed environment where employees were trusted to manage their workload, making the modest pay tolerable, has turned toxic. Here are some observations from my time here: - The Senior Director has emailed us about promoting work-life balance but has done nothing to improve our quality of life; if anything, it has worsened. A. Private messages are prohibited except by management; all communication must go through monitored Microsoft Teams or department-wide emails (this will be important later). B. Recently, company-wide emails have banned open-cup drinks, earbuds, personal devices, and taking “too many breaks”. The ban on personal devices seems hypocritical since downtime is common during off-peak times, and the Senior Director himself is frequently on his phone in his office. Rules for thee. C. The Senior Director thinks the Streaming department should be replaced by automation and that reflects in his attitude towards us and subsequent department morale. D. He seemed to have adopted a "If you don't like it, leave" attitude towards valid criticisms and concerns. - Middle managers and supervisors demonstrate poor management skills. A. There's a lack of current, meaningful, and enforced Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The handbook is outdated and doesn't align with the training provided to frontline staff, which is mostly verbal with some Microsoft Word bullet points. 1. During my training, I was inadequately prepared for uncommon scenarios and received blame-shifting responses instead of constructive help when seeking assistance. Small mistakes are magnified through department-wide emails copied to executive management, which feels humiliating and punitive. 2. Verbal instructions from managers sometimes conflict with each other, especially regarding new policies. The absence of clear SOPs puts employees in difficult situations. 3, There's no framework for turning mistakes into learning opportunities when all communication is scrutinized. Every mistake and request for help seems to be met with "Why didn't you…" followed by a department-wide email. This environment discourages reaching out. a. The department chat among coworkers, once characterized by memes and jokes, has been replaced by minimal communication deemed strictly necessary. 4. I suspect that increased micromanagement from upper management forces middle managers to foster punitive environments rather than embrace mistakes and growth. B. Management lacks transparency in policy implementation, highlighting their poor management skills. 1. Improving transparency would make the job more bearable and foster a sense of inclusion. 2. When I seek to learn from mistakes, my explanations are often disregarded in favor of dismissive "just do it" responses. 3. I did not take my lunch due to workload and I was told that "We would like you to take your lunch, because that is the time for you to breathe". Please treat me like an adult. We have downtime scattered throughout the day where I can breathe. We all know management has limited over-time hours to give. 4. I have not received positive reinforcement/acknowledgement after my training. Even in my training I can only recall one time where I was given a “Good Job” for a specific task. All my other compliments in training were generic and felt compulsory. 5. Discussing pay is actively discouraged and implicitly prohibited. - Interdepartmental toxicity is notably high, and I'll leave it at that.