A once great place being slowly reduced to nothing... - Anonymous employee Groupon Employee Review

All the great things we created are slowly being stripped away, as a brand it is losing its identity in favour of austerity. The amount of job losses/cuts recently has been utterly ridiculous, don't get me wrong, I understand the business decision behind lowering the operating margin, but the way it has been handled over the last 3 years has been atrocious. Terrible vision from the board leads to a very uninspiring local senior leadership team, mostly because they probably don't have a clear direction or plan to work towards, which trickles further down to the frontline staff who are deeply, deeply unhappy, I don't think I knew anyone that was genuinely enthused about their job when I left. The rot is so deep I worry if the company will recover. The amount of resources available for development is utterly disgusting, being told by L&D that there was no help available whatsoever to coach young managers, for people that actually want to improve and make a difference in their job, it really did make me sick to my stomach. Not that it's the fault of the local L&D departments, they do a fantastic job with what they've got, but what they've got isn't much. HR direction from the US has been a disaster with continually changing messaging month on month, year on year. I understand this is [was] a growing company, but that doesn't mean it should feel like a ship in a storm all the time. Terrible and non existent HR leadership, even at local level, has led to a culture of mistrust between the company and its employees. Nobody knows whats going to happen next which makes for very little engagement. Absolutely awful comms from HR from the very start of the company, examples of language completely out of sync with local/work culture, of rash and almost childlike attitudes, no unity in messaging from one person to the next. Add that to confusion in org and responsibilities means they have lost a lot of good people. Its only recently that they gained some GREAT people who are doing their best. Not strong enough leadership through the sales team, no one has stepped up to sync sales and ops, which could be the key to making this company tick. It's obvious that the Sales team will promise the moon on a stick to our merchants for a contract signature, only to disappoint down the line when they don't get what they've been promised, diabolical expectation management. This maybe down to unrealistic targets, and probably due to poor training also, which I sympathise with, but this makes it all the more important that their leadership is strong, I fear it is somewhat of a boys club though. People go for being liked over being respected, which doesn't make for longevity.