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AT&T just made it official: Workplace loyalty is dead; Stankey is the latest CEO to tell employees to get on board with a return-to-office policy or go elsewhere; full 2,500-word memo in the post. - Mander
mander.xyz~“Fortune Brainstorm TECH 2011” by Fortune Live Media is licensed under CC BY-ND
2.0~ [https://www.flickr.com/photos/63750402@N07/5961125043]. ::: spoiler AT&T
CEO John Stankey’s full 2,500-word memo in response to Employee Engagement
Survey results. My Observation on our Employee Survey results To: All AT&T
Managers Thank you to the over 99,000 employees who responded to this year’s
Employee Survey. Your feedback helps us understand what we need to focus on—and
how we need to communicate — as we strive toward our goal of ranking in the top
third of Fortune 100 companies in employee engagement. It is incredibly
encouraging that 73% of our employees took the time to respond to the survey,
with 79% of those respondents feeling committed and engaged with their work at
AT&T. While this is reassuring, especially considering the amount of change
we’ve navigated as a company recently, it wasn’t a surprise to me that we fell
short of our engagement goal. Nor was it a surprise that scores declined since
our 2023 survey. We are midstream on a multi-year journey to build the company
we want, not simply optimize the one we have — and I believe your feedback
accurately reflects where we are. In the survey you asked for transparency in
communication from leadership. Although not my best in terms of brevity, the
purpose of this multi-page note is to share a few of my thoughts with you
directly while your leaders work with you to prepare their action plans. After
reading this, I’m hopeful you will understand my perspective on the company we
are working to build and what we can and will do to respond to elements of your
feedback. This note may also help you identify areas where your professional
expectations might be misaligned with the strategic direction of this company.
Most points outlined below have been communicated in other forums and with your
leadership, but this is my attempt to articulate how all the pieces fit
together. Let me start by setting some context on what has been underway at AT&T
over the last 4 years. To secure our long-term success as a company, we
concluded that a shift in our operating culture was essential. For those of you
who are fans of management science, this shift can be characterized as moving
away from an orientation on hierarchy and familial cultural norms and towards a
more externally focused and competitive market-based culture. I understand that
some of you may have started your tour with this company expecting an
“employment deal” rooted in loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated
compensation, work structure, and benefits. We have consciously shifted away
from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture — focused on
rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment. We believe this is the only
way to succeed in the dynamic, technologically driven markets where we operate.
I know change like this is difficult and can be unsettling for some. However, as
General Eric Shinseki so eloquently stated, “If you dislike change, you’re going
to dislike irrelevance even more.” Many of your survey comments indicate
agreement with this notion — a desire for our company to evolve to better
support our customers and each other. If you are of the small minority that
shared comments similar to, “I have heard this nonsense before and I’ll ignore
things until this goes away…” or “things were just fine the way they were…”
there might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice. It
takes every one of us, moving in the same direction, to win against the
competition, sustain our business, and create rewarding and interesting
challenges for employees who want to work in a market-based culture. Changes to
compensation, pensions, benefits (paid time off, care leaves, mental health
support), delayering, work locations, and workplace environment are all in
service of this change. When I read comments lamenting disruption, I tried to
pick my brain for an example of another 100+ year old company that didn’t have
to disrupt itself to secure sustainable relevance. I am still searching for the
first example. I suspect our willingness to disrupt ourselves is the
under-pinning of why this company approaches 150 years of relevance — from fixed
to mobile, TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) to IP (Internet Protocol), and
narrowband to broadband to name a few. I recall at every turn there were parts
of the organization advocating to maintain the status quo, and I suspect
hindsight would tell us we are happy we chose change — as messy as the journey
might have been. Your Survey Feedback Now to the survey. There was quite a bit
to unpack in your feedback, but like any business imperative, focus and
prioritization are essential. Your collective data and comments were analyzed to
extract the most critical themes outlined in this note. You will hear more
specifics from your respective leaders around these themes in the coming weeks.
1. Career and professional growth I agree with the sentiment that everyone
should understand potential career opportunities and career paths we have here
at AT&T. With that, you should have a solid sense of the contribution required
in your current role, and what can be done to earn more responsibility to push
professional pursuits to a higher level. Many leaders have not yet fully
addressed this expectation within their own organizations. Our shift to hub
locations was a pivotal step to more effectively achieve this goal.
Concentrations of employees enables the teamwork, mentorship, and visibility
that, when combined with performance and contribution, can better equip you to
advance your career. While we have made strides to get more people into fewer
places, we have more work to do to align complimentary work functions in the
right places. I expect all department leaders to complete this work — to
thoughtfully consolidate coordinating functions and career paths to reduce the
ongoing need to relocate for growth and development. 2. Capabilities to do your
job You deserve tools, processes, and capabilities that help you serve our
customers effectively, without being hindered by internal process friction or
system constraints. While we’ve made progress with legacy migrations and
infrastructure upgrades, there’s still a long way to go. We find ourselves at
the midpoint in what is a long and technically challenging journey. You have my
commitment that improving these capabilities remains a top priority. We are
committed to allocating resources and attention to ensure we see tangible
benefits of our record levels of investment in these areas, and we’ll continue
to update you on these improvements. 3. Where we work You are right to expect to
work in a professional, well-maintained, and functional facility. Another reason
we established a focused set of hubs was to allow us to invest in our workplaces
and bring them to a more common standard. This was something we never would have
been able to achieve while operating in 500+ metropolitan areas. It’s also why
we need to continue exiting under-utilized real estate (the remnants of deferred
maintenance from a long string of mergers and acquisitions) to free up resources
to invest in our core locations. The fact is real estate transitions require
sustained efforts over several years to arrive at the place we desire and you
deserve. Some of you are in a location where enhancements are actively underway
or even completed. Others may be unaware of changes that are coming in short
order. We will more actively share where we are making investments, what has
been accomplished, and what is on the horizon. We agree with the feedback you
shared, and we are taking this seriously. I expect we all will be required to
demonstrate some patience and flexibility as we work towards a better place. 4.
Culture Your collective comments about culture may be the most difficult to
synthesize. This topic is a bit like beauty — it’s all in the eyes of the
beholder. Many of you suggest a desire to improve upon what you’re observing as
“daily norms.” I wish I could summarize a set of actions that could quickly
guarantee our transition to the market-based cultural norms I described earlier.
But I don’t think a short-term list of actions or programs would suffice.
Believe me, there is nobody more impatient for this outcome than yours truly.
Changing and embracing a workplace culture is like learning a language —
knowledge grows in a variety of ways and develops over time. Like learning a
language, you gain proficiency by practicing in the real world. We need to
commit to learning the language together so we can all share a common
“shorthand.” To that end, we will be doing some additional work illustrating
what market-based culture norms look like in practice — and sharing some prompts
that can be applied in your daily work life. We’ll keep coming at this cultural
evolution from every angle — but I have to ask you to commit. Commit to
adjusting your own behaviors and actions without looking to your right or left
(or above) to see what everybody else is doing. A favorite quote by W. Clement
Stone comes to mind: “So many fail because they don’t get started.” Please jump
in and avoid the human tendency to blame the neighbors for the problems in the
neighborhood! We will all change at a slightly different pace, and that’s to be
expected. 5. Personal well-being I understand that many may find the demands of
your daily lives challenging and difficult. Elder care, job stress, child
rearing challenges, economic uncertainty, community unrest, technology anxiety —
the list can get long. While no company can address how the combination of these
dynamics might impact your specific circumstances, we can work to support
employees in a way that improves their ability to manage what life throws at
them. Our decisions to maintain industry-leading healthcare, change time-off
policies, augment leave structures, offer financial counseling, and enhance
mental health benefits are examples of overt decisions we have made on this
front. Despite rising medical costs, we intend to hold management medical
contributions flat for the 2026 renewal cycle. We continue to test new
approaches to services and care in the workplace and are seeing some promising
models emerge that may warrant implementing at scale. These are just some
examples of how we are constantly evaluating how we can best support you in
managing life dynamics, and you can expect more updates in the coming year. Now,
onto some additional context and expectation setting. How we work together The
most challenging things we do here at AT&T require unwavering teamwork - it’s
essential that we attract and promote talent that embraces working together to
deliver results. When you think about what we are doing to transform this
company - efforts like legacy sunset, fiber deployment, wireless network
modernization, moving down market in Business, BSS/OSS (Business Support
System/Operations Support System) platform migrations, digital/online/omni
channel enablement, core routing network consolidation, and 5G standalone core -
these are all efforts that require inter-departmental collaboration and
coordination. They constitute the bulk of our $23 billion annual investment.
This work is far more demanding and challenging than our efforts to keep the
train on the tracks during enforced COVID isolation. -person collaboration and
predictable presence improves each team’s ability to execute effectively on
large, complex projects. Our customers expect us to be here to serve their
needs. Our third-party partners need to be able to consistently depend on times
to collaborate. Our employees deserve reliable support with their current
responsibilities and impromptu guidance for continued development. This is why
we work in person, together, during common hours. We run a dynamic,
customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives. If the
requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you
have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your
aspirations and needs. That said, if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work
schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life
challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those
of the company and the culture we aim to establish. Does this mean there isn’t
room for emergencies or special circumstances? Of course not. We will always try
to support that which can’t be planned for — or that which needs to be
deliberately planned for — and I expect any leader to manage their organization
accordingly. Contribution, trust, and effectiveness Our cultural tenants include
our intent to Win as One. Implicit in this commitment to one another is that we
all carry our part of the load aid measurably contribute to the priorities the
team. As technology and the “information economy” evolves, each of our
respective contributions are going to become increasingly measurable. In
addition to information garnered from performance reviews, peer feedback,
assessments work history, and certifications (to name a few), we analyze
patterns of behaviors from broad cohorts (aggregated data). This allows leaders
to identify behaviors that are obvious outliers, supplemented with the broadest
set of information available, to determine if the behavior being evaluated is
consistent with our stated priorities and employment expectations. An employee’s
data must significantly differ from their peers — to a level harming team
cohesion, compensation, and inconsistent with our Win as One philosophy — before
an individual’s name is linked to any behavior. Some may view this approach as a
matter of trust, and that perspective is understandable. In several forums, I’ve
expressed concerns that past data indicated more outliers than we’d like. If we
overlook these outliers, it can impact overall trust in leadership and
coworkers, especially among those who consistently contribute and uphold our
standards. Addressing these exceptions is important to ensure we’re fair to the
vast majority of employees who support their colleagues and deliver for the
organization every day. Next steps I hope this clarifies how we’ve prioritized
action planning around your feedback — and transparently explains why some
concerns and desires expressed may not be entirely aligned with our strategic
direction as a company. While it’s natural to feel uneasy during times of
conflict and change, the greatest source of lasting anxiety is when expectations
aren’t aligned or discussed openly. Determining the best way to address new
challenges and position the company for long-term success is constantly on our
minds as leaders. I truly believe that this approach is the way to attract and
retain customers, secure necessary resources from our investors, and offer
meaningful employment to as many of our folks as possible. As difficult as it is
to balance all these stakeholders, I am confident that we are on the right
track. Your leadership team will be outlining our path forward in response to
the survey in more detail. Until then, I ask that each of you explore your own
opportunities to make a difference. While there will certainly be actions and
initiatives that require sponsorship from senior leaders, our collective success
also depends on each of us taking ownership where we can. Rather than waiting
for others to act, I encourage everyone to share their ideas and take
initiative. As I said at the beginning, we are midstream on a multi-year journey
to build the company we want, not simply optimize the one we have. Your feedback
makes us better, and we have many strong capabilities and attributes to
leverage. Our best days are ahead. John ::: Source: Business Insider
[https://www.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-john-stankey-email-employee-feedback-survey-rto-policy-2025-8].
Note: the memo is not copyrighted, as it was not written by Business Insider
reporters.
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