There was a shift in expectations around showing up, doing good work, and having a life outside of work. It could have been changes in senior leadership, or the rollout of an enterprise system that took years to finally go live, or a change in the market demands for the products Lakeshore sells, I don't know, it could have been all of the above and more. What changed over the course of months was leadership demanding performance checks on their managers who were responsible for not only their own ad hoc projects but their team's detailed metrics, training, coaching, and mentorship. Teams had to prove via daily updates of tasks completed or underway on dashboards and tracking lists that had to be manually inputted in Jira, Sharepoint, emails, excel lists, or all of the above, which added undue strain and stress on an already full workload and minimal support from those above them. Managers were told that they couldn't hire replacements for those who left voluntarily or involuntarily, so teams had to make do with who they had and, in some cases, team members ended up reporting to multiple teams. Managers and their teams were told they had to make do with the skills and people they had on their teams for tasks and projects no one on the team were well versed on. This approach was for leadership, affectionately called being "scrappy" but for the frontline folks who had to carry out these new tasks/projects on top of reporting their updates to their managers and amongst themselves for some, with little or no direction, then be called out for not doing a good job, is demoralizing and sad, especially when these same individuals cared about their work and what they contribute innately. The RTO policy applied to everyone except for those in favor with senior management. Before RTO was implemented, it became a requirement to have the camera turned on during conference calls even during town hall meetings and scheduled all-company meetings. If your camera was not turned on, you were reprimanded. Rather than hiring for expertise and paying for that expertise, hiring became, let us see how little we can pay someone and if they turn out to need training for their role, have someone else train them even when that trainer also didn't have wiggle room on their schedule. Its not senior management or senior leadership's job at the company to be accountable for new hires selection, even though they are generally the final say on whether or not folks are hired. Instead, the performance of the new hire is a direct reflection of their direct supervisor abilities to "upskill" or "manage" the hire to meet in a lot of cases unrealistic demands. Those in favor with senior leadership continued to thrive and those in favor to those in favor to senior leadership still had a job.
