Dell employees used the company's signature corporate survey to tell bosses how they feel after its RTO push

• Computer giant Dell carries out an annual employee engagement survey known as "Tell Dell."
• After its strict RTO mandate, workers used the survey as an opportunity to show Dell how they really felt. 
• The survey's results, which BI has seen, showed a big drop in a key metric called the employee net promoter score.

When executives decide on a new direction for a company, there's often little that workers can do about it besides leave. But that doesn't mean they are happy about it.

At computing giant Dell, after a year shaped by layoffs, a strict return-to-office (RTO) mandate, and a new employee monitoring system, workers have taken an opportunity to share their true feelings with the company.

The company runs an annual employee engagement survey called "Tell Dell."

According to internal results seen by Business Insider, this year's employee net promoter score (eNPS), a key measure of the likelihood that employees would recommend Dell as a great place to work, dropped by double digits compared to the previous year.

The score, which is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, dropped from 62 to 48. It is based on responses from around 98,000 employees.

"No matter what, I've never seen a score move that fast in the wrong direction," said one staffer who spoke to BI on condition of anonymity.

"Frankly, most people I work with were expecting a steeper decline," said another Dell employee.

In some departments, the decline was even sharper. In the global marketing team, the rating dropped by 68%, while in some smaller teams, the eNPS was close to or at zero, sources at the company told BI.

"I think the marketing teams feel particularly threatened due to the accelerated adoption of GenAI to streamline marketing processes and reduce cost," one worker told BI.

Others cited the RTO initiative, layoffs, and the way changes at the company have been handled as reasons for the decline.

Listening to employees

According to BI's sources, "Tell Dell" has been conducted annually for at least eight years. Employees completed the survey in May, and results were shared with leaders in late June.

Two Dell HR leaders have previously described the survey as "a key listening tool we use to drive action across the organization."

"In the past, leadership has treated Tell Dell very seriously. The results are covered in detail with every team member along with action plans to address employee concerns," one Dell employee explained.

However, this year, leadership seemed to gloss over the eNPS, multiple workers told BI.

"It's as if every leader was given the OK to ignore it," said one Dell employee.

In an internal email addressing the results, Jenn Saavedra, Dell's Chief HR Officer, noted that the eNPS was dropping across the industry and that Dell was "pleased to exceed the industry benchmark."

"You have 'told Dell,' and we are listening," Saavedra wrote, moving on to highlight positive metrics in leadership, confidence in the company, and connection and culture.

The eNPS is "just one question in a robust survey that gives us a current snapshot of employee sentiment," Dell told BI when asked about the results.

"In the Tell Dell Survey, our team members shared that they believe their leaders treat them with respect, uphold the company's Culture Code values and offer flexibility to balance work/life."

"Our team members also expressed their confidence in the future vision, strategy and leadership of Dell."

However, five workers that BI spoke to about the results said the eNPS was the true measure of worker satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

"C-suite brushes over the real issues to push a positive image of the company,' said one employee.

"I don't think leadership cares about our feedback. They just keep rowing in whatever direction they want," said another.

The focus on employee wellbeing "seems to have been replaced by reducing costs and increasing profitability," a third employee said, adding that they believe Dell's culture has been "significantly compromised" by recent policies.

In February, Dell became one of the many large corporations mandating workers return to the office. The Texas-headquartered company introduced a new hybrid work policy requiring workers to classify themselves as either hybrid or remote.

Those who chose remote are now ineligible for promotion and can't change roles — almost 50% of workers in the US chose that option.

Many say they didn't have a choice, as Dell has built geographically divided teams. They would have had to move state or commute for hours to get to one of the 17 approved offices.

For hybrid workers, in-office culture has also changed.

Dell introduced a new monitoring system for hybrid employees, tracking and rating their attendance with color-coded flags.

Workers have told BI that the shift in culture has felt particularly harsh given Dell's longstanding reputation as an inclusive and encouraging employer. 

Workers reject RTO

Dell is just one of many tech giants, Wall Street banks, and large retailers that have been leading efforts to reverse the work-from-home culture that emerged following the pandemic. But employees have been pushing back.

After Deutsche Bank mandated staff come in for three days a week, the company faced a wave of backlash from staff complaining about the lack of office space and bottlenecks at the company.

And at the German software giant SAP thousands of staff signed an internal letter saying that they felt "betrayed" by the company's "radical" RTO policy.

Though some see in-office work as better for productivity, a recent Deloitte survey found that good work-life balance was the top consideration for both Gen Z and millennials when choosing an employer.

At Dell, some now feel their only solution is to leave the company.

"None of us expect any changes to address the eNPS drop or that they will listen to what comments we provided," said one worker.

Five of BI's sources have found new jobs since the policy was first announced, and others said they and many of their colleagues are actively looking.

Are you a worker at Dell or another company pushing staff back to the office? Contact this reporter at pthompson@businessinsider.com