Five years ago DHR was an amazing company. They were innovative, fast moving, they had a strong line on encouraging diversity into the company to bring in different thinking, they focused on keeping their people engaged by having them work towards a world changing purpose and by showing empathetic leadership with good rewards and as a result, we wanted to work harder, to be successful. Something has gone wrong in the last five years. DHR are now a faceless US corporation with a focus on streamlining all costs and making money for shareholders. They removed all DEI style thinking, even stopping us from using certain words in presentations and training. They are misbalanced with top level leadership whilst removing the middle managers and people who execute the work, to save on costs. They refuse to take control of many of their operating companies, leaving several of them to run some pretty shady DBS processes, but at the same time will overrule on overall market strategy. This is a company that now thinks norhing of making a large number of people redundant and then flying 200 senior leaders out to a conference. Innovation has slowed massively as operating companies struggle with headcount reductions and cost cuttings and also with poorly supported DBS processes. They have forced through a "together at gemba" initiative, which is basically to bring all employees onsite 5 days a week as that is what shareholders desire. Unfortunately this doesn't fit with the global working structure that Danaher previously encouraged so now employees struggle to connect as the teams that they work with are usually not on the same site. The need to maximise shareholder profit means that commercial activities are favoured above all others, but this has led to short term reactive thinking, also contributing to the loss of innovation and a lack of progression. This is a company headed for trouble if they don't change by the end of 2025.
