Sorry, the title was a little too broad but I felt the need to keep it concise. This is really about subtle, subversive nasty behavior on the part of coworkers and my question was triggered by reading a Glassdoor review and HR response for my current company. Here are the details:

Until about 4 years ago, the company didn't hire anybody for apparently a couple decades. They didn't seem to need to because nobody left - there was NO turnover! We still have people who have been there for 20 - 30 years. Those are at all levels of the company, from business analyst to VP. You probably won't be surprised to hear that there's a bit of a cult of seniority worship. But what they don't seem to realize is that those senior people are extremely stagnant and actually out of touch with our customers.

So then they started hiring some new people, including me. Lots and lots of conflict. The new people have fresh new ideas and familiarity with new technologies and tools. The seniority people are big believers of "it's worked for us this long" and a deep fear of new tech and tools.

Last year the HR team and high level management initiated a massive culture change program, to try to change from a slow, stagnant company to one full of innovation and creativity. Here's where things got fun. Now the senior people all talk about innovation and the new cultural behaviors but they still struggle with actually walking the walk. I've seen this myself even though I didn't post this particular Glassdoor review.

So when this person left the company, they wrote the review and cited the clashing between new and old workers and the fact that the seniority people are getting away with violating the new cultural behaviors. The HR response invited the person to contact him/her with details "so we can fix it".

I'm trying to picture this in my head. So reviewer contacts HR and kind of repeats the complaint. HR asks for details. Reviewer gives names and examples. Best I can see, what happens next is just a he-said-she-said disagreement about what was meant or that the reviewer misunderstood or whatever. Thinking about some of the situations I've encountered with these close-minded senior people, I have no idea how to describe the situation without sounding like I've just got a huge beef with them. Or if I keep it as polite and civil as possible, then it's just something like "I suggested X and he didn't agree". Big deal, that's not a conflict.

This is why culture change is so hard. You can't MAKE people change. I think most people know that, but I can't figure out why HR doesn't seem to.