It turns out that treating your workers like school children (and not in a “you earned a pizza party” kind of way) tends to backfire. Summer is in full force, this year’s report card is in, and Dell Technologies’ executives are staring straight at a fresh-off-the-presses failing grade.
Scores from the technology giant’s latest employment engagement survey, called “Tell Dell,” paint a picture of slipping satisfaction. The annual survey has been running for eight years now, and employees’ submitted sentiments from May were shared in late June, sources told to Business Insider.
The employee net promoter score (eNPS), or if the respondent would recommend someone to work at Dell, was especially lacking. While scores varied by department, the overall eNPS decreased from 63 to 48 in one year, according to BI, which saw the results of the around 98,000-person survey
“No matter what, I’ve never seen a score move that fast in the wrong direction,” an anonymous employee told BI.
“It is important to note that the question on whether you would recommend Dell is one question in a robust survey that gives us a current snapshot of employee sentiment,” a Dell spokesperson told Fortune, claiming the survey showed other positive metrics. “While our score did drop, if you look at the Perceptyx blog, you will see that Dell is still well above industry averages.”
It’s not entirely shocking to see Dell employees are down in the dumps. After a dip in sales, the company let go of 13,000 employees in 2023 (issuing layoffs in both February and August). Those who stuck around were subject to changing policies.
In February, Dell announced staff would be given a less exciting version of a sorting test as they were divided into two groups: hybrid, or remote workers. It seemed to be a bit of a false start, as Dell warned remote employees that working from home would come at the cost of their progress. “Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as a hybrid onsite,” Dell said in a memo.
The polarizing mandate was followed up with equally polarizing strategy: employee surveillance and monitoring. Dell was revealed in May to be tracking employee attendance and grading them with an elementary school style of using blue, green, yellow, and red flags.
“In today’s global technology revolution, we believe in-person connections paired with a flexible approach are critical to drive innovation and value differentiation,” Dell told Fortune at the time.
Either way, workers didn’t seem to take the bait. In June, almost half of Dell’s full-time employees opted to stay remote, Business Insider reported, citing internal data.
Even if this year doesn’t make it appear that way, flexible work was seemingly a burgeoning part of the culture at Dell before the pandemic and subsequent RTO crunch kicked in. “The debate on whether a large remote workforce can be productive is over – we’re learning that it’s not only possible, it’s successful,” Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and chief operating officer for Dell Technologies, wrote in May 2020. The tech company boasted it “had already been leaning into flexible work,” with 65% of team members leveraging flexible-work policies.
The company’s subsequent 2022 Future of Work report remained committed to the idea of a remote-first or friendly workplaces, saying “a long-term ambition for Dell Technologies is for 60% of our workforce to operate remotely on any day.”
The total 180 isn’t necessarily sitting well with the remaining workers, if you take the employee eNPS score as an indicator. And executives are trying to brush it under the rug, according to BI’s sources.
“It’s as if every leader was given the OK to ignore it,” one Dell employee said of the survey responses.