Where Careers Go to Die - Anonymous employee DHL Express Employee Review

This place is truly where careers go to die. I have an MBA, been with the company almost a decade, and am very ambitious however I have been passed over dozens of times for promotions that have literally gone to people who have been with the company 6 months, have no education, seniority, experience etc (these things clearly do not matter to this company to the point that nearly every promotion shocks the entire employee base). I have seen it happen to countless other hardworking employees as well and it only serves to demoralize and embitter its more senior employees. The atmosphere can frankly get toxic and turns good employees into mindless grinders. As noted by some others, the management is, by and large, incompetent and clueless to what we actually do and tend to get to where they are by kissing butt and stepping on/calling out people. Many of the managers are simply hold-overs from when the company was failing miserably and they just happened to default into their position by simply being the only guy around willing to take the job. The structure is not skill based and is the root cause of many of the other issues. This lack of skill and experience has created a situation where they measure the wrong KPIs vs what they say they want. They do not develop talent or reward hard work. There is no incentive or need to be proactive because these things are never considered in the advancement process --- it's a cycle of self preservation. Also, they fully assume and expect that you will work at least an hour overtime every single day; this amounts to about 9-10 total months out of the year (which is the only thing that brings their hourly pay up to a living wage for the year). It's such an expectation that getting out "on time" is considered early. They purposely under-staff some departments because they know that employees have no choice but to stay and cover up for their incompetence. They refuse to adequately staff and refuse to give the necessary tools for success yet those are the departments that have the largest single impact on the daily success of the company---odd strategy. The company has traditionally been a high-turnover company and though they claim to have all these new strategies and programs for retention, they still operate with the undertone that everyone is easily replaceable and thus individual ideas/concerns are meaningless and job security has no meaning other than the fact they keep the department under-staffed. HR only circles the wagons when employees need a realistic buffer when issues arise. I have seen them become directly confrontational when an employee has an issue with management. They purport that they are making record advances financially since abandoning domestic shipping but I suspect it's the result of some crafty accounting; read in that this is a company that didn't give any form of raise for workers under management for over 8 years. They have tried to revamp their image in recent years by pretending to be a great place to work but the internal reality is that this really is where careers go to die.