Uncertain times - Anonymous employee Yellow Pages Employee Review

Parking was not compensated whereas it had been prior. Many perks were removed including the free coffee and drinks and the lunchroom. The mid-level management: No clue what some were doing. There was no consistency across the departments. I would recommend hiring people who have interpersonal skills or have gone through a management program since the role of a manager is to manage people….and communicate with them. What we got was awkwardness, no relationship, just a focus on numbers and an attempt to find “metrics” to judge performance upon regardless of what you did. As a department, we heard a lot of negativity from the immediate manager. Negativity in the sense that we were kept on a short leash because the manager didn’t want to cause “trouble”. Any ideas to improve processes were weighed heavily against the manager’s own fears of “rocking the boat” CEO…..likely hired to part up the company for the bottom line. Put on a great performance about “bleeding yellow” and lead everyone still in the company (of whom were not yet laid off) to believe in his path and plan for regrowth. While he maintained that he wanted to be transparent, there were just so many things that were not unfortunately. Regardless, we all saw it coming; we just didn’t know when. Lack of interdepartmental communication. Being in a role that had to access multiple departments for a variety of things, this was one of the biggest points of frustration. A problem with an account could pass through a multitude of departments before it was resolved, adding to resolution turnaround times. Instability and low morale with the constant organizational restructuring. Processes were inherently dotted with complication across the board. So many questions of “why do we do it this way?” could not be answered except for a “it’s YP, its how it’s done.” Processes that were rolled out that impacted our day to day without actually consulting the people who actually did the job, which added little to no value but made it harder and longer to navigate to get the same or similar results. Outsourcing part of operations to India….quietly. Company’s pride and joy is the sales department. They were always publicly recognized while the departments who supported them, clearly did not get anything remotely similar. Software/platforms: Too many to run for the day to day. Most of these platforms didn’t “talk” to each other. For the ones that did “communicate” with each other, there usually was something that went wrong. Larger picture: I’m not confident that Yellow Pages has the bones to subsist for much longer in this day and age. Fortunately, they have competent people in the bowels of the ship who will keep the ship afloat for now. Unfortunately, the captain and the crew are running amok, running off the dying fumes of what is left of their brand, trying to save some things that might not matter while some of those, who are along for the ride but aware of the situation, are seeking out the life rafts. Much of the talent is leaving the company, seeking higher ground, before this vessel runs aground.