Latest news with #Stankey
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
AT&T CEO laid out a new vision for the company's culture. Business Insider broke down the aftermath.
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Since getting laid off nearly two years ago, a former Accenture manager has struggled to land a job. He told Business Insider that recruiters say he's "expensive." On the agenda today: Chipotle's fortunes soared under a fast-food CEO. Employees say they paid the price. A newsletter founder claimed she had over 1 million subscribers. Internal docs are more complicated. America is on the verge of adopting the worst part of Europe's real estate market. Microsoft is mulling a stricter RTO policy. But first: It's a seismic culture shift. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here. This week's dispatch We got the memo I was reading around on our site when I saw a scoop pop up. AT&T CEO John Stankey wrote a memo — a long memo — about management and culture and his expectations for employees at the telecom company. (Hats off to reporters Dominick Reuter and Katherine Li.) It was riveting. If you are Musk-esque about working, it would have felt inspiring. If you aren't, it might have felt depressing. Either way, it was nothing if not provocative, and a must-read about the changing workplace — one of the most important topics we cover at Business Insider. After we broke the news, we dug deep for you. We quickly wrote a piece summarizing the main takeaways. Then, we gave guidance on succeeding in a workplace more focused on performance than loyalty and tenure — as Stankey described the culture shift underway. We next talked with Wall Street analysts about how investors were reacting to Stankey's leadership. (The numbers suggest quite well!) And so far, we received over 1,000 reactions from our readers, most of whom thought the CEO's memo wasn't an effective message. (Feel free to share your thoughts in the form at the end of this story.) Finally, our chief correspondent Aki Ito chimed in. Last year, Ito wrote about the end of loyalty in the workplace — the demise of the unwritten contract that solid work would reliably be rewarded. When she saw Stankey's memo explicitly discarding that, she thought: He's saying it out loud. She offered her take in response to Stankey — and she didn't hold back. This kind of varied, engaged, in-depth — and exclusive — coverage of workplace shifts and how to navigate them is why we are here for you at Business Insider. Let us know what you think at eic@ Burrito bowl blues Current and former Chipotle employees told BI the fast-food restaurant used to be a special place to work. It offered a stellar working experience where employees were well-trained and valued. Those qualities, they say, have precipitously declined. In recent years, Chipotle has become a Wall Street darling, with its annual revenue surging to $11.3 billion in 2024. At the same time, it's also become a "Wall of Shame" employer. Inside Chipotle's transformation. A $200 million email empire's shaky subscriber math Daniella Pierson's newsletter empire, The Newsette Media Group, landed her podcasts, speaking gigs, and a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30. She said she had over 1 million subscribers, but her own records tell a different story. A spokesperson for Pierson confirmed the newsletter goes to about 500,000 subscribers each day — less than half the 1.3 million subscribers claimed in a 2025 pitch deck. A BI investigation uncovered questions about what Pierson has told the public and advertisers about her business when compared to what internal documents show. Do her subscription numbers add up? A nightmare scenario Owning a home in Italy may sound like a dream, until the process of finding one turns into a nightmare. Europe's Zillow equivalents only offer partial views of the housing market, and brokers there are known to gatekeep their best listings. In worst-case scenarios, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each asking for a different price. Thanks to the current Compass-Zillow feud, the US housing market could be heading down a similar path. Adieu, house hunting! Another RTO order looms Microsoft has had a flexible work policy since 2020, allowing employees to work remotely as much as 50% of the time without approval. That may soon change. The software giant is considering a three-day return-to-office order, people with knowledge of the plans told BI's Ashley Stewart. The move would bring Microsoft in line with its Big Tech peers. It could start as soon as January 2026. This week's quote: "It's potentially fatal. You absolutely cannot stay mum in situations like this." — Kevin Donahue, a 30-year veteran of crisis comms, on how Intel should respond to President Donald Trump calling for its CEO to resign. More of this week's top reads: I'm 85 and can't find a job. I receive over $5,000 a month, but it's not enough — I feel like I'm on a sinking ship. Samsung rolls out five‑day RTO tracking tool to curb "coffee badging" for some US semiconductor staff. One popular dating app is actually " crushing it" right now. Bank of America juniors will be reassigned — but not fired — if they accept PE jobs. There's a spending split between Americans, and it's popping up from McDonald's to Uber. I spent three days at KPMG's $450 million training facility to see if it could actually make corporate retreats cool. OpenAI offered me a job. Meta reached out just hours after I posted about it. HBO Max is setting a trap for password sharers. The BI Today team: Jamie Heller, editor in chief, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.
Business Insider
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
AT&T CEO John Stankey's hard-charging leadership style is winning over Wall Street
AT&T is facing a once-in-a-century challenge, and CEO John Stankey is pushing the company to "disrupt itself" and go hardcore to meet the moment. The telecom's sprawling network of copper wires is no longer suited to 21st-century demands for speed and mobility, demands that increasingly require new infrastructure of fiber optic networks and wireless spectrum. Stankey, who took the helm as CEO in July 2020, knows this. He's shown himself willing to do something about it — even if that means a sharp departure from the legacy company's past to prepare for the future. As the company moves to sunset most of its copper network in the US by the end of 2029, Stankey has also instituted a broad cultural shift internally. He's moved away from prioritizing 20th-century corporate values like loyalty and tenure in favor of a tech-style, "more market-based culture," the AT&T CEO wrote in a sweeping memo last week that was first reported by Business Insider. It's a strategy that is showing signs of paying off, with many Wall Street analysts recently boosting their price targets for the stock. AT&T shares are up 22% this year compared to 8.25% for T-Mobile and 6.7% for Verizon. "They refocused on fundamentals, and the fundamentals are just getting better," BNP Paribas telecom analyst Sam McHugh told Business Insider. "Investors really like that simple strategy. It gives a very clear message — it's delivering financially." It's a transition that Stankey says is vital to the company's future — and will take time to accomplish. "We are midstream on a multi-year journey to build the company we want, not simply optimize the one we have," the CEO wrote in his memo. "I tried to pick my brain for an example of another 100+ year old company that didn't have to disrupt itself to secure sustainable relevance. I am still searching for the first example," he added. "I suspect our willingness to disrupt ourselves is the under-pinning of why this company approaches 150 years of relevance." AT&T's bid for continued relevance has meant the building of large and growing wireless and fiber optic networks as it looks to fend off increasing competition from Verizon, T-Mobile, and a host of smaller operators. The company has managed to keep pace with its top competitors in terms of mobile phone accounts as it ramps up an aggressive fiber optic expansion that Stankey says will lead to further mobile signups from customers looking to bundle services. AT&T beat expectations for its second quarter earnings, released in July, on the back of strong wireless and fiber subscriber growth and a multi-year estimated tax benefit of up to $8 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It could face a more challenging second half of the year. The company said that some of the second quarter's lift came from new customers pulling orders forward to avoid tariff-related price hikes, and that it was cautiously anticipating higher rates of customer churn in the latter half of the year. "We are assuming that we're going to continue to have a competitive environment," AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches told analysts. Another area that Stankey is reshaping is AT&T's workforce. Without such a massive legacy copper network to support, most of AT&T's competitors have managed to grow with a comparatively smaller head count. AT&T now has roughly 141,000 employees, and the company has taken several rounds of reductions in recent years to align its workforce more with its peers. Verizon has 99,000 and T-Mobile has 70,000, and Verizon also gave buyouts last year to some 4,800 workers. The increasingly strict return-to-office mandate that AT&T has rolled out in phases over the past year has also resulted in further reductions, multiple employees have told Business Insider, and Stankey signaled in his memo that he's fine with more people leaving if they're not on board with the company's new direction. "If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish," he said in the memo. Stankey has taken a similar my-way-or-the-highway approach in the past. He was the company's chief operating officer who drove the acquisition of Warner Media and reportedly led the division with a high-handedness that ruffled the entertainment executives. The move was part of a larger trend of network services providers seeking to own content producers, and Stankey (as CEO) shrugged off setbacks as he pursued a vision of expanding HBO to rival Netflix and Amazon Prime. AT&T jettisoned Warner Media in 2022 at a loss of over $40 billion, and finalized its exit from the media business earlier this year when it sold its remaining stake in DirecTV to private equity firm TPG at a steep discount. While Stankey's apparent appetite for taking big bets seems unchanged, the circumstances around this chapter in the company's history are potentially more favorable. "I'm sure there's a book to be written one day of how you can turn around your profile among investors," said McHugh, the BNP Paribas telecom analyst, who said many long-term investors previously dismissed the company for its poor execution and misallocation of capital into non-core assets, like the media deals Stankey led. "I covered European telcos for a long time. Basically, the stocks that do best in the sector are the ones who have a simple story and just focus on their core competencies," he added. "By luck or by good judgment, I think they're now on the right track." In his memo, Stankey said the workplace and technological shifts were essential for AT&T to succeed in the market, citing US Army General Eric Shinseki as saying, "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more."
Hindustan Times
04-08-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
AT&T CEO tells employees to work from office 5 days a week – or find a new job
AT&T CEO John Stankey has sent a clear message to employees: align with the company's return-to-office (RTO) mandate or look for another job. In a blunt internal memo sent to all managers on Friday, Stankey acknowledged the growing discomfort among employees following AT&T's decision to enforce a five-day in-office mandate. AT&T CEO John Stankey says employees must return to office -- or leave. According to a report in Business Insider, he addressed the company's recent employee engagement survey, which saw 79% of 99,000 respondents reporting they felt committed to their work, but noted a decline in overall engagement levels. 'I'm not surprised,' Stankey wrote, referring to the dip in engagement. 'We are midstream on a multi-year journey to build the company we want, not simply optimize the one we have.' AT&T mandates 5 days in office American telecommunications giant AT&T began calling employees back to the office full-time earlier this year, phasing out its hybrid work policy. The change has been unpopular with some staff, who flagged logistical issues such as desk shortages and parking challenges. However, Stankey doubled down on the policy in his note, calling it essential for collaboration and execution of large-scale projects. 'If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish,' he wrote. In recent months, AT&T has been attempting a major cultural shift – from what Stankey described as a hierarchy-based, tenure-rewarding structure to a market-driven, performance-oriented workplace. That includes changes to compensation, benefits, and job expectations. 'We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment,' he wrote. RTO – or look for another job In his lengthy internal memo sent Friday, Stankey made it clear that AT&T's shift to a five-day in-office workweek is non-negotiable — and that employees unwilling to adapt should consider other opportunities. "We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives," he wrote. "If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs."
Business Insider
02-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
5 things the AT&T CEO's sweeping memo says about where corporate America is headed
CEOs are done mincing words. AT&T CEO John Stankey didn't hold back in a Friday message to managers at the 140,000-person company: "Commit to adjusting your own behaviors." Stankey's message comes about seven months after the company issued a strict return-to-office mandate and amid what the CEO described as a longer-term cultural shift underway. The 2,500-word memo is a rare and detailed window into a CEO's thinking during a period of transition. It offers valuable insight for workers beyond just AT&T employees and reveals how a large, legacy company is working to adapt and innovate. Business Insider published the full 2,500-word memo here. Here are our top five takeaways on how Stankey's message reflects broader shifts in corporate culture. CEOs are done sugarcoating change The tone of Stankey's memo is direct, reflecting a broader shift in how corporate executives are communicating to staff. "If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish," Stankey wrote. This sort of candid communication has become increasingly common among executives as they work to make change, whether return-to-office mandates or efforts to adapt to AI. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told his employees in 2023 that if they didn't embrace working in the office, they may not have a future at the company. "It's past the time to disagree and commit," he said at the time. "And if you can't disagree and commit, I also understand that, but it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon because we are going back to the office at least three days a week, and it's not right for all of our teammates to be in three days a week and for people to refuse to do so." Jassy later expanded the mandate to five days a week. More recently, Jassy didn't hold back in a memo posted to the company's website in June. He said workers should expect AI to impact staffing levels. "In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," he said. Company culture is no longer about loyalty, tenure, or family. It's about performance. AT&T is a nearly 150-year-old company that has long embodied a culture that celebrates loyalty and tenure. Focus on those values, however, is a thing of the past, Stankey said. He was upfront about this change in Friday's memo. "This shift can be characterized as moving away from an orientation on hierarchy and familial cultural norms and towards a more externally focused and competitive market-based culture," Stankey said. The shift reflects the performance vibe that has become so prominent in Silicon Valley in the last year. Amy Coleman, Microsoft's chief people officer, wrote in a message to managers in April that the company was introducing new tools to improve performance management. "Today, we're rolling out new and enhanced tools to help you accelerate high performance and swiftly address low performance," she wrote. "Our goal is to create a globally consistent and transparent experience for employees and managers (subject to local laws and consultation). These tools will also help foster a culture of accountability and growth by enabling you to address performance challenges with clarity and empathy." Stankey said performance would be employees' best metric for longevity at the company moving forward, and encouraged staff to get on board. "I know change like this is difficult and can be unsettling for some. However, as General Eric Shinseki so eloquently stated, 'If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.'" Employees need to carry their own weight, and management is watching In this new era at AT&T, managers will have a new tool for evaluating whether employees are really meeting the demands of their job: data. "In addition to information garnered from performance reviews, peer feedback, assessments, work history, and certifications (to name a few), we analyze patterns of behaviors from broad cohorts (aggregated data)," Stankey wrote. "This allows leaders to identify behaviors that are obvious outliers, supplemented with the broadest set of information available, to determine if the behavior being evaluated is consistent with our stated priorities and employment expectations." Outliers in the data will be identified and dealt with, he said. "Addressing these exceptions is important to ensure we're fair to the vast majority of employees who support their colleagues and deliver for the organization every day," Stankey said. Amazon took a different approach to the same goal by cutting down on managers to "flatten" the organization and push individuals to pull their weight. "If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates' ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations' ability to make customers' lives better and easier every day," Jassy said. Some companies see returning to the office as necessary to compete Stankey said AT&T's push for change is driven by "efforts that require inter-departmental collaboration and coordination." That's because "collaboration and predictable presence improve each team's ability to execute effectively on large, complex projects," he said. To achieve that, employees must "work in person, together, during common hours." The idea that working together in an office is ultimately better for the company's success is a growing belief among executives. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol told staff in an email last month that returning to the office allows employees to "share ideas more effectively, creatively solve hard problems, and move much faster." "We understand not everyone will agree with this approach," Niccol wrote. "But as a company built on human connection, and given the scale of the turnaround ahead, we believe this is the right path for Starbucks." Returning to the office isn't always without its problems Some employees previously told Business Insider that AT&T's return-to-office push has caused some practical problems, including a lack of desks and parking spaces. One employee at the company's Atlanta office said the company's working environment had "deteriorated" as more employees returned. Two others said finding parking in a timely manner had been a challenge for themselves and for colleagues. Stankey addressed these complaints in his message in a section titled "Capabilities to do your job." He wrote, "You deserve tools, processes, and capabilities that help you serve our customers effectively, without being hindered by internal process friction or system constraints." Dell faced similar issues following its own return-to-office mandate, which CEO Michel Dell issued in January. When the mandate took effect in March, it caused "lots of in-office politics," one program manager at the company told Business Insider.
Business Insider
02-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Read AT&T CEO's frank response to employee feedback about a 5-day RTO mandate
Roughly seven months after AT&T called workers back to the office five days a week, CEO John Stankey has a message for employees: Get on board or get out. In a lengthy Friday memo addressed to "all AT&T managers" that was obtained by Business Insider, Stankey shared his thoughts on the results of the company's employee engagement survey. The AT&T CEO said he is "not surprised" by the declining self-reported employee engagement level and touched on some changes the company is going through. The note was, in part, to help workers identify where their "professional expectations" may be "misaligned with the strategic direction of this company," he wrote. "If you are of the small minority that shared comments similar to, 'I have heard this nonsense before and I'll ignore things until this goes away…' or 'things were just fine the way they were…' there might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice," Stankey wrote. According to the memo, 79% of respondents said they feel committed and engaged with their work. The survey results represent over 99,000 employees, which is 73% of the company. AT&T told BI that the company has no additional comments on Stankey's memo because it "speaks for itself." "We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives," Stankey wrote. "If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs." "That said, if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish," Stankey added. AT&T has undergone a series of changes this year, starting with replacing a hybrid schedule with a five-day in-office mandate. Some AT&T employees previously told BI that it became difficult to obtain office desks and parking spaces amid the RTO push, while the telecom's rival, Verizon, saw the office mandate as an opportunity to recruit AT&T workers interested in hybrid schedules. In the memo, Stankey addressed the "right to expect to work in a professional, well-maintained, and functional facility" and the ongoing and coming investments into office hubs. Stankey is the latest CEO to tell employees to get on board with a return-to-office policy or go elsewhere. He also described the company's transition as a shift away from some elements, including "loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated compensation," to "a more market-based culture —focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment." "When I read comments lamenting disruption, I tried to pick my brain for an example of another 100+ year old company that didn't have to disrupt itself to secure sustainable relevance," he wrote. "I am still searching for the first example." So far, AT&T shares have risen more than 21% in 2025, and the company posted robust earnings that met analyst expectations over the past two quarters. "I know change like this is difficult and can be unsettling for some," Stankey said in the memo. "However, as General Eric Shinseki so eloquently stated, 'If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.'" Read AT&T CEO John Stankey's full memo: A Message from John Stankey My Observation on our Employee Survey results To: All AT&T Managers Thank you to the over 99,000 employees who responded to this year's Employee Survey. Your feedback helps us understand what we need to focus on—and how we need to communicate — as we strive toward our goal of ranking in the top third of Fortune 100 companies in employee engagement. It is incredibly encouraging that 73% of our employees took the time to respond to the survey, with 79% of those respondents feeling committed and engaged with their work at AT&T. While this is reassuring, especially considering the amount of change we've navigated as a company recently, it wasn't a surprise to me that we fell short of our engagement goal. Nor was it a surprise that scores declined since our 2023 survey. We are midstream on a multi-year journey to build the company we want, not simply optimize the one we have — and I believe your feedback accurately reflects where we are. In the survey you asked for transparency in communication from leadership. Although not my best in terms of brevity, the purpose of this multi-page note is to share a few of my thoughts with you directly while your leaders work with you to prepare their action plans. After reading this, I'm hopeful you will understand my perspective on the company we are working to build and what we can and will do to respond to elements of your feedback. This note may also help you identify areas where your professional expectations might be misaligned with the strategic direction of this company. Most points outlined below have been communicated in other forums and with your leadership, but this is my attempt to articulate how all the pieces fit together. Let me start by setting some context on what has been underway at AT&T over the last 4 years. To secure our long-term success as a company, we concluded that a shift in our operating culture was essential. For those of you who are fans of management science, this shift can be characterized as moving away from an orientation on hierarchy and familial cultural norms and towards a more externally focused and competitive market-based culture. I understand that some of you may have started your tour with this company expecting an "employment deal" rooted in loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated compensation, work structure, and benefits. We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment. We believe this is the only way to succeed in the dynamic, technologically driven markets where we operate. I know change like this is difficult and can be unsettling for some. However, as General Eric Shinseki so eloquently stated, "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more." Many of your survey comments indicate agreement with this notion — a desire for our company to evolve to better support our customers and each other. If you are of the small minority that shared comments similar to, "I have heard this nonsense before and I'll ignore things until this goes away…" or "things were just fine the way they were…" there might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice. It takes every one of us, moving in the same direction, to win against the competition, sustain our business, and create rewarding and interesting challenges for employees who want to work in a market-based culture. Changes to compensation, pensions, benefits (paid time off, care leaves, mental health support), delayering, work locations, and workplace environment are all in service of this change. When I read comments lamenting disruption, I tried to pick my brain for an example of another 100+ year old company that didn't have to disrupt itself to secure sustainable relevance. I am still searching for the first example. I suspect our willingness to disrupt ourselves is the under-pinning of why this company approaches 150 years of relevance — from fixed to mobile, TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) to IP (Internet Protocol), and narrowband to broadband to name a few. I recall at every turn there were parts of the organization advocating to maintain the status quo, and I suspect hindsight would tell us we are happy we chose change — as messy as the journey might have been. Your Survey Feedback Now to the survey. There was quite a bit to unpack in your feedback, but like any business imperative, focus and prioritization are essential. Your collective data and comments were analyzed to extract the most critical themes outlined in this note. You will hear more specifics from your respective leaders around these themes in the coming weeks. 1. Career and professional growth I agree with the sentiment that everyone should understand potential career opportunities and career paths we have here at AT&T. With that, you should have a solid sense of the contribution required in your current role, and what can be done to earn more responsibility to push professional pursuits to a higher level. Many leaders have not yet fully addressed this expectation within their own organizations. Our shift to hub locations was a pivotal step to more effectively achieve this goal. Concentrations of employees enables the teamwork, mentorship, and visibility that, when combined with performance and contribution, can better equip you to advance your career. While we have made strides to get more people into fewer places, we have more work to do to align complimentary work functions in the right places. I expect all department leaders to complete this work — to thoughtfully consolidate coordinating functions and career paths to reduce the ongoing need to relocate for growth and development. 2. Capabilities to do your job You deserve tools, processes, and capabilities that help you serve our customers effectively, without being hindered by internal process friction or system constraints. While we've made progress with legacy migrations and infrastructure upgrades, there's still a long way to go. We find ourselves at the midpoint in what is a long and technically challenging journey. You have my commitment that improving these capabilities remains a top priority. We are committed to allocating resources and attention to ensure we see tangible benefits of our record levels of investment in these areas, and we'll continue to update you on these improvements. 3. Where we work You are right to expect to work in a professional, well-maintained, and functional facility. Another reason we established a focused set of hubs was to allow us to invest in our workplaces and bring them to a more common standard. This was something we never would have been able to achieve while operating in 500+ metropolitan areas. It's also why we need to continue exiting under-utilized real estate (the remnants of deferred maintenance from a long string of mergers and acquisitions) to free up resources to invest in our core locations. The fact is real estate transitions require sustained efforts over several years to arrive at the place we desire and you deserve. Some of you are in a location where enhancements are actively underway or even completed. Others may be unaware of changes that are coming in short order. We will more actively share where we are making investments, what has been accomplished, and what is on the horizon. We agree with the feedback you shared, and we are taking this seriously. I expect we all will be required to demonstrate some patience and flexibility as we work towards a better place. 4. Culture Your collective comments about culture may be the most difficult to synthesize. This topic is a bit like beauty — it's all in the eyes of the beholder. Many of you suggest a desire to improve upon what you're observing as "daily norms." I wish I could summarize a set of actions that could quickly guarantee our transition to the market-based cultural norms I described earlier. But I don't think a short-term list of actions or programs would suffice. Believe me, there is nobody more impatient for this outcome than yours truly. Changing and embracing a workplace culture is like learning a language — knowledge grows in a variety of ways and develops over time. Like learning a language, you gain proficiency by practicing in the real world. We need to commit to learning the language together so we can all share a common "shorthand." To that end, we will be doing some additional work illustrating what market-based culture norms look like in practice — and sharing some prompts that can be applied in your daily work life. We'll keep coming at this cultural evolution from every angle — but I have to ask you to commit. Commit to adjusting your own behaviors and actions without looking to your right or left (or above) to see what everybody else is doing. A favorite quote by W. Clement Stone comes to mind: "So many fail because they don't get started." Please jump in and avoid the human tendency to blame the neighbors for the problems in the neighborhood! We will all change at a slightly different pace, and that's to be expected. 5. Personal wellbeing I understand that many may find the demands of your daily lives challenging and difficult. Elder care, job stress, child rearing challenges, economic uncertainty, community unrest, technology anxiety — the list can get long. While no company can address how the combination of these dynamics might impact your specific circumstances, we can work to support employees in a way that improves their ability to manage what life throws at them. Our decisions to maintain industry-leading healthcare, change time-off policies, augment leave structures, offer financial counseling, and enhance mental health benefits are examples of overt decisions we have made on this front. Despite rising medical costs, we intend to hold management medical contributions flat for the 2026 renewal cycle. We continue to test new approaches to services and care in the workplace and are seeing some promising models emerge that may warrant implementing at scale. These are just some examples of how we are constantly evaluating how we can best support you in managing life dynamics, and you can expect more updates in the coming year. Now, onto some additional context and expectation setting. How we work together The most challenging things we do here at AT&T require unwavering teamwork - it's essential that we attract and promote talent that embraces working together to deliver results. When you think about what we are doing to transform this company - efforts like legacy sunset, fiber deployment, wireless network modernization, moving down market in Business, BSS/OSS (Business Support System/Operations Support System) platform migrations, digital/online/omni channel enablement, core routing network consolidation, and 5G standalone core - these are all efforts that require inter-departmental collaboration and coordination. They constitute the bulk of our $23 billion annual investment. This work is far more demanding and challenging than our efforts to keep the train on the tracks during enforced COVID isolation. -person collaboration and predictable presence improves each team's ability to execute effectively on large, complex projects. Our customers expect us to be here to serve their needs. Our third-party partners need to be able to consistently depend on times to collaborate. Our employees deserve reliable support with their current responsibilities and impromptu guidance for continued development. This is why we work in person, together, during common hours. We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives. If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs. That said, if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish. Does this mean there isn't room for emergencies or special circumstances? Of course not. will always try to support that which can't be planned for — or that which needs to be deliberately planned for — and I expect any leader to manage their organization accordingly. Contribution, trust, and effectiveness Our cultural tenants include our intent to Win as One. Implicit in this commitment to one another is that we all carry our part of the load aid measurably contribute to the priorities the team. As technology and the "information economy" evolves, each of our respective contributions are going to become increasingly measurable. In addition to information garnered from performance reviews, peer feedback, assessments work history, and certifications (to name a few), we analyze patterns of behaviors from broad cohorts (aggregated data). This allows leaders to identify behaviors that are obvious outliers, supplemented with the broadest set of information available, to determine if the behavior being evaluated is consistent with our stated priorities and employment expectations. An employee's data must significantly differ from their peers — to a level harming team cohesion, compensation, and inconsistent with our Win as One philosophy — before an individual's name is linked to any behavior. Some may view this approach as a matter of trust, and that perspective is understandable. In several forums, I've expressed concerns that past data indicated more outliers than we'd like. If we overlook these outliers, it can impact overall trust in leadership and coworkers, especially among those who consistently contribute and uphold our standards. Addressing these exceptions is important to ensure we're fair to the vast majority of employees who support their colleagues and deliver for the organization every day. Next steps I hope this clarifies how we've prioritized action planning around your feedback — and transparently explains why some concerns and desires expressed may not be entirely aligned with our strategic direction as a company. While it's natural to feel uneasy during times of conflict and change, the greatest source of lasting anxiety is when expectations aren't aligned or discussed openly. Determining the best way to address new challenges and position the company for long-term success is constantly on our minds as leaders. I truly believe that this approach is the way to attract and retain customers, secure necessary resources from our investors, and offer meaningful employment to as many of our folks as possible. As difficult as it is to balance all these stakeholders, I am confident that we are on the right track. Your leadership team will be outlining our path forward in response to the survey in more detail. Until then, I ask that each of you explore your own opportunities to make a difference. While there will certainly be actions and initiatives that require sponsorship from senior leaders, our collective success also depends on each of us taking ownership where we can. Rather than waiting for others to act, I encourage everyone to share their ideas and take initiative. As I said at the beginning, we are midstream on a multi-year journey to build the company we want, not simply optimize the one we have. Your feedback makes us better, and we have many strong capabilities and attributes to leverage. John
