There is a lot that can and will be said here. :) Based on the review rating trends lately, there are a lot of unhappy employees at InMoment. There has been quite the exodus of great employees in the last couple of years. People are definitely unhappy for a reason. Is working for InMoment as terrible as people make out? No, I don’t think so. Is there room for improvement? Yes, a lot! The company has definitely made a big shift to a very different organization in the last 2 years – mostly attributed to new leadership (CEO, CTO, and other VPs and SVPs). I personally feel that these shifts have made the company successful in some ways, but unsuccessful in others. One of the big shifts into the “unsuccessful” category has been culture and employee treatment – and this is what has been more visible in recent reviews here. I don’t think the company is a sinking ship and is headed for certain doom as some reviews have been portraying. I feel like there is enough talent and tenacity to keep moving the company in a successful direction. However, if InMoment wants to keep and attract employees, I feel they need to make some adjustments.
Some evidence of this is in the awards InMoment has got over the last five or six years. From about 2013 to early 2017 InMoment was often on a lot of the “Best Places to Work” lists (at least in Utah) and received leadership (CEO) and other types of recognition in public settings. Additionally, the company received overall “successful company” awards (‘Fast’ lists, ‘Fortune’ lists, Forrester, Stevies, etc.). Notably, InMoment has been absent for the last few years in companies’/magazines’ “Best Places to Work” lists. (Admittedly they did get on the “Shatter List” last year for being a contributor to help remove the glass ceiling for women in the workplace). The other types of awards (“successful company” types) have still been coming in but even then I feel like they’ve started to trickle in at a slower pace. Take this for what it’s worth and feel free to double-check the facts here, but I feel like it’s an indicator of where the company has been – especially around how InMoment is losing their ability to create a work environment where people want to be.
All that said, here is a general list of areas to improve in and some background info about each point:
· Raises. A couple years ago the company removed their annual raise schedule and implemented some sort of merit-based bonus system that is still vague to me and others. There is no more cost-of-living raise and no set schedule to review employee performance and give them raises based on that. As it currently stands at the time of this review, it is just based on nominations from other employees. This just doesn’t seem fair and it stands to reason that most companies give cost-of-living raises annually - at the minimum.
· Culture. The old/founding culture is pretty much smothered and dead – killed by new C-level leadership and the exiting of some key employees that were invested in keeping it alive. (I could give example upon example of frustrating ways it was killed). I guess it’s not that surprising that culture changed. I don’t know if the old culture can be revived (there are some lingering traces of it), but maybe it doesn’t need to be. However, it would be great some sort of vibrant culture was created. Either way, I don’t feel like this has been a priority for leadership at all despite one of the CEO’s favorite sayings: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Walk the walk here, please.
· Employee treatment. I won’t say too much here (see my points on raises, culture, and trust), but employees have to feel appreciated and cared for (and not just financially). In some regards I feel the company does well –they really recognize the top-tier performers. But it’d be great if they’d look at employees as a whole and recognize them as people and care about them. It’d be great if, rather than ignoring it, management really looked at employee feedback. They often put on a show that they are, but in the past year I’ve had a conversation with an individual within HR that said the execs blatantly ignored a big area of concern on a somewhat recently employee survey (see ‘Product’ section below). Your employees are your company - so listen to them and address their feedback truthfully and openly.
· Product. Soon after the arrival of the new C-suite execs, the product department was axed. It was replaced by something called the “Garage”. This ended up being more of a UI/UX department working in a vacuum. A lot of what made the company’s previous products great was thrown to the side here in my opinion. This essentially made developer’s lives worse because nailing down requirements for actual software that would work and make sense was extremely difficult. I could write a whole review on why this went poorly, but I’m not going to do that. In short, the garage and its subsequent handling was likely one of the worst decisions ever made by the company in recent years. I know management is trying to fix this by having it more integrated with the dev department (after ignoring feedback repeatedly from developers and other employees) and I wish them all the best. I feel like the product they’ll end up with will be good, but the amount of time and frustration in which it took to get there could have been unnecessary. Clarification: I don’t feel the employees in the Garage were sub-par – I felt they did the best with what they could. I lay the blame for how this worked out directly on management.
Another issue with product is there is so much focus on new product, the old product has been laying there with not much maintenance or enhancement. That makes it tough for sales and CSMs and has to be driving some retention problems (both employees and customers). Maybe this shift in priorities was a gamble worth taking (and I really hope it is), but it seems like there may have been a better approach here.
· Nepotism. This isn’t as big of an issue as others, but it there are hints of it everywhere - especially lately. In this regard, it’s mostly about friends (but there are some family issues sprinkled in there). The C-level is bringing tons of old coworkers or friends from other companies (mostly HP) and sometimes I feel it is slowly becoming HP 2.0 - for better or for worse. I understand you want to work with people you know, but I feel this is getting out of hand.
· Career paths. I feel the general consensus is that there is not much opportunity for career growth. At least in the Development department there hasn’t been much talk or action lately about this. At first, there was big talk about career paths and how HR and leadership would help employees manage this, but almost nothing has been done. There have been a few people promoted, but it’s been mostly on the project manager side of things and, outside of that, some title enhancements with very little job responsibility change. If management stuck with their proposed plan, I feel that it would have been awesome. Again, walk the walk.
· Remote office/working concerns. New leadership has been hiring a lot of people that work remotely (partially due to all the former HP employees scattered across the country). I understand that this is the information age and you can have virtual meetings and collaboration, but I feel something important is being lost here. Especially when you have teams that need to work together well and efficiently and they span 3 different time zones. I feel that brings tremendous overhead and slows productivity. (This may be more of a personal gripe than others I list here as this could be a legit way to run a business nowadays - I just feel there are better ways.)
· Trust. I feel a lot of the issues here could likely span from lack of trust. Trust from management is sparse, so trust in the leadership reflects that. We have (and had) some amazing talented employees here that were mismanaged poorly and I feel like, in most cases, this boiled down to management’s lack of trust in them. From rumors I’ve heard (and read here on Glassdoor…so I feel there is some substance to this), the CEO can’t trust employees he works with to do things right. I see this in other parts of the company as well- not just at the C level. Fixing this would be a huge win.
