There are a number of discrepancies between the way Fenton’s senior leadership portrays itself to staff and how it actually acts and makes decisions. These discrepancies ultimately mislead employees.
For example, staff are recruited for internal groups such as marketing for the agency itself, new business development, and employee resource groups. Senior leadership claimed hours worked in these groups would be taken into account when reviewing staff billable hours for clients. Senior leadership claimed that work in these areas, though not billable, would not be held against employees. However, when the agency decided to cut staff they determined who to cut by analyzing billable hours, not taking into account internal work that was supposed to be “protected.” This is a dishonest way of managing staff that punishes employees for trying to help strengthen the agency.
Fenton also implemented a “Fenton Learning Lab,” an online learning system in which staff are required to take courses in addition to their client work. Though promising in theory, many of the courses contained only regurgitated soundbytes of meaningless fluff about being positive and learning from failure. Emails with weekly courses often deride staff for missing courses with statements such as, “this is not what excellence looks like.” Especially when added to a stressful workload, the Fenton Learning Lab is likely to result in little actual learning.
Though Fenton leadership states they support staff, particularly junior staff, its system of review for entry level employees is weighted in such a way that minor complaints from sometimes random employees results in damaging repercussions for people just starting their careers. Its group review process for Account Executives in which mid-level to senior staff all discuss and review each junior staff member with no concerns for confidentiality or basic fairness is deeply problematic. If senior leadership has concerns about the performance of junior staff, they need to seriously consider ways to support them, listen to them, and give them more than lip service.
Fenton leadership has also proven to be poor stewards of the agency’s finances. The 2022 Fenton Forward retreat in which employees from around the country were flown to New Orleans for multiple days and taken on a steamboat ride on the Mississippi river was irresponsible extravagance. Fenton Forward seems to have taken Fenton backward.
