Story 86

Performance reviews are calibrated to predetermined promotion and layoff outcomes for use in potential legal cases – not measure employees’ actual contributions, performance and skills. They are weaponized to document Management’s favorites – not to be fair or give equal opportunity.

HR buries reports about problematic managers, they can only “offer training” to address problematic behavior, and shuts down and gaslights reporting employees rather than investigating claims in earnest.

Senior managers two and three levels below Citi’s CEO, including HR personnel, ignore documented complaints. One senior HR person in the Chief Human Resources Officer’s organization explicitly recognized retaliatory action—yet nothing happened.

The pattern is clear: eliminate competent people who could expose the dysfunction, retain obedient employees who will poorly execute misguided policies.

After a reorganization, a managing director announced in a team meeting that “all the unhappy people are gone”—yet the employee survey is supposedly anonymous. The survey itself is designed to suppress negative feedback: when employees give poor ratings about managers, follow-up questions are automatically disabled, preventing capture of detailed feedback.

Citi leadership and HR don’t want to know, and they don’t want it documented, despite public claims otherwise.

That same managing director told another MD that a director “close to retirement” doesn’t work hard anymore. At the next reorganization, that director was gone—textbook age discrimination. Someone hired to replace her with a promise of promotion to director was never elevated. Commitments mean nothing.

In an interview, HR told me Citi has a zero tolerance policy for retaliation. When I told her we both know that there is a gap between policy and reality, she has nothing to say.

When employees report misconduct, the institutional response follows a predictable pattern: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO). Deny the behavior occurred, attack the reporter through performance management and retaliation, and position the institution as victim of a disgruntled employee.

The message to employees is clear: don’t report, don’t complain, don’t expect accountability. HR protects the institution, not the people in it. This is by design.