#hr

Why don't they cut the entirety of HR and call it a day? I don't think they ever did anything useful for employees. Nobody would miss them.

Looks like there’s a meeting with a lot of managers at 10 today. I’m going to assume it’s the HR call coaching them on RIFs…

Does it hit with the next pay period or does it usually come later?

We started the town hall strong, but things took a turn once the conversation shifted to “culture” and how we plan to integrate it into everything. It was disappointing to hear how culture and sentiment were being framed.

Culture isn’t a buzzword or something you sprinkle on top of initiatives it’s what employees feel when they walk through the doors every day. It’s reflected in how we support people, how decisions are made, and how work actually gets done.

Right now, we don’t have a defined culture strategy or a competitive differentiator, so saying we’re doing “market-based culture” rings hollow. And leaning heavily on AI because it sounds innovative doesn’t address the real issue: we haven’t clarified who we are, what we stand for, or how we create an employee experience people can trust.
AT&T is not culturally where it needs to be. Culture is shaped by systems, leadership behavior, consistent norms, and shared meaning—and right now those elements aren’t aligned or clearly defined.

I hate that I have to come here to ask this but I don’t trust my HR business partner at all. I am an HQ employee and I hate every day of it. How long do I need to stay in order to receive my 2025 bonus? I know we are paid in like February of the next year and stuff, but is there a cut off ? Or do you have to be employed through the pay period where we receive it next year? I’d realllllly appreciate the help or experience.

Layoff Tactics Keep Changing, and the Blunders Keep Coming

• Amazon informed staffers via a text-email combo. Target asked workers to stay home. Does any of that make job cuts less painful?*

When Amazon started laying off 14,000 employees last month, some workers got a text at home telling them to check their email.

The email subject line read: "Update Regarding Your Role at Amazon." Inside: "Unfortunately, your role is being eliminated." Employees could join a voluntary meeting with a company leader or HR rep to ask questions. Some thought: Why bother?

Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/layoff-job-cut-strategy-changes-9b8ef26a

The quick text-email approach shows how layoff tactics keep evolving. The pandemic brought individual Zoom calls and surprise HR meeting invites. Now, the goal is efficiency with fewer chances for public drama or group grieving.

Companies want to share bad news "as quickly as possible across a large swath of the employee population" to control the message and limit worker stress, said George Penn, a managing VP at Gartner who advises on staff cuts.

There's never a good way to tell employees they're losing their jobs, he said, but "you're looking for the least-bad option."

Many employees disagree. The newer methods have drawn criticism. "Who thought that was OK?" a user wrote about Amazon's layoffs. "When you lay people off with dignity, you prove your values are real. When you do it via text? You prove they were just words."

Recent layoffs have had other problems: inaudible Zoom calls, technical glitches. Some managers were cut out, unable to answer questions or explain dismissals to their teams.

## Why companies keep changing tactics

One reason is to prevent disruptions. Southwest Airlines closed corporate offices to most staff during its corporate layoffs earlier this year. Some employees learned their status at home on video calls in listen-only mode. Target told U.S. corporate employees to work from home the week in October when it conducted layoffs.

Remote layoff decisions prevent teary office goodbyes as workers leave conference rooms after bad news, according to HR specialists. It also solves a logistics problem: When companies cut thousands of workers at once, there usually aren't enough HR people or leaders for individual meetings.

## When things go wrong

Plenty can still fail. During Target's recent layoffs, some employees logged onto a Zoom call and hit an audio glitch in the first few minutes that stopped them from hearing parts of the conversation. The company later emailed workers to apologize and confirm they'd been laid off, according to a note viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A Target spokesman acknowledged the audio issue but said the follow-up email was always planned. He added that the Zoom glitch didn't stop those in the meeting from hearing the information before the call ended.

Other cuts have led to bigger scenes. After media company Condé Nast said it would move Teen Vogue under Vogue.com and let some employees go, a group of workers confronted HR executive Stan Duncan outside his office to ask why. Video of the encounter spread fast online. Condé Nast later fired four participants in the office protest and suspended others.

The firings sparked their own protest in a rally outside Condé Nast headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday. New York Attorney General Letitia James attended, where people held signs saying, "Reinstate the Fired Four." James threatened to take Condé Nast to court.

A Condé Nast spokeswoman said those terminations were lawful and based on clear policy violations. "We have an obligation to protect our workplace from harassment and intimidation," she said. "If the attorney general has concerns, we are happy to respond."

Some companies warn in advance that layoffs are coming to soften the blow, though that can create anxiety too. Verizon Communications CEO Daniel Schulman indicated in an all-hands meeting recently that layoffs were coming, according to someone familiar with the matter. The company plans to eliminate roughly 15,000 jobs in the coming days, its largest cuts ever, the Journal previously reported.

## Does any of this matter?

Veteran HR specialists say yes. The tone and style of a layoff discussion can greatly affect how employees process a dismissal.

"For a lot of people, the way it's communicated to them actually will reduce the chances that it's a negative separation," said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, VP of HR services at Engage PEO, which handles HR functions for small and midsize businesses.

To prepare companies, she often suggests HR executives role-play layoff interactions. When she does such exercises with clients, Matsis-McCready often plays a frustrated or emotional employee learning of a layoff.

"I've cried. I've done very angry responses," she said. "It is really important to be prepared for any type of response."

The goal is to learn how to calm a situation and respond with care. A one-on-one conversation with an employee that goes well can help prevent a laid-off worker from posting on social media or voicing anger elsewhere.

"When you're laying somebody off," she said, "you're trying to be human about it."

Anyone know which team(s) were impacted by the recent HR reorg?

Be careful out there folks they’re tracking everyone’s KPI for RTO tracker and that data will be used as an input for the upcoming layoffs by VPs and HR

They’re here for the company, not for us.

It’s painful to watch how SAP continues to generate massive profits from the North American region, yet when layoffs happen, NA employees are the first ones targeted. The organization expects returns from NA but doesn’t reinvest in the region by protecting jobs or creating opportunities. Instead, the only real job security seems to exist in Europe and lower-cost countries, purely because of cost advantages.

This double standard feels like hypocrisy. Many high-performing employees across the US and Canada have been intentionally targeted. Several German managers have knowingly set NA employees up for failure, only to replace them later with far less experienced individuals in Europe people who often lack the maturity or capability to handle the complexity of the roles they’ve inherited.
What’s even more disheartening is the lack of empathy displayed by certain HR manager (who shouldn't be managers) in Europe. Many of leader's got downgraded their role to 2-3 times lower but still talk as if they own SAP. Don't have little to no shame to resign and leave the company. They deliver polished speeches during town halls about ‘family’ and ‘support,’ but the moment real, difficult questions are asked, they become defensive, vindictive, and punitive. Employees who speak up are often singled out and slowly pushed out through a toxic environment.

There is a clear pattern of favoritism, retaliation, and deeply unethical behavior happening across the HR space. These actions are not only damaging careers they are eroding trust, culture, and the very integrity the company claims to stand for.

It’s disheartening to see the direction SAP is heading. Having been part of this company for so long, it’s painful to witness the current layoffs and the uncertainty many colleagues are facing. At the same time, I’ve learned that HRBPs from across the globe are flying to Germany for a week-long in-person meeting which could easily cost around 200k$
In moments like these, it’s fair to question whether such travel is truly necessary. Could these costs have supported a few more roles or extended employment for impacted staff? Many of us on the engineering side feel the weight of these decisions deeply we continue to build and innovate while wondering. We engineers are building the company and the HR and the support functions are enjoying it. Does board leaders have become so week to not even as these questions to HR Leader and the CFO who is making these hasty decisions
I hope leadership reflects on these choices with transparency, empathy, and financial prudence. Strong, people-first decision-making is more important now than ever.
Do the board leaders have become so week to not even as these questions to HR Leader and the CFO who is making these hasty decisions?
SAP has become #AntiImmigrant #AntiEmployee

Are there any real people left in HR who could share the current employee headcount?

If you are a full time H.R. and/or H.R. lead working mon-Fri. 7-3, 8-4, or 9-5. Your position is in danger of being eliminated by March 2026, just like the aforementioned post, a list is being compiled and that position is in great danger of being eliminated, and store managers will most like absorb those tasks.

Can someone that gets the axe and works for HR come here and spill the beans about what really has been going on?

Is hr or the boss giving us info on Munday

Trying so hard to get job permanently. Her latest LinkedIn post trying to be vulnerable is so fake. Your lack of experience showed last week so do not try to cover up.

This post will disappear as she has people remove any posts that are critical of her.

Layoff’s are set to start happening on November 20th, 2025 and this is all due to Verizon struggles in losing customers and rising cost. This is a message directly from new CEO. Sales representatives have now been trying to unionize and HR is going to stores to try to prevent this from happening.

Had a meeting with HR this afternoon about a few days a few months ago where I had no transportation to work and was relying on an evening ride to get my badge swipe. My direct management was aware and, supposedly, fine with it. Our team also has the unofficial ‘official’ go ahead from our global head to leave once we’ve logged 4 hours in office, but that’s beside the point I guess.
HR called it a ‘fact finding’ meeting and had no concrete answer when I asked what next steps were and when I could expect to hear back. I’ve seen posts of people being let go for the same basic reason and am just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience? Meeting first and then termination to follow? Obviously can’t change the outcome now, but I’m still curious.

I had been lurking on this site for a while and decided to post today because I couldn't handle it any longer.

As a long-term SAP employee, I can no longer identify with the organization. We've always had reorganizations and layoffs, but I've never seen the Board and HR be so anti-employee and put employees against one another.

Here are some trends I am noticing:

There is no MOVE SAP for T1-T3 personnel.
Annual salary appraisals are not even close to inflation, thus we lose money each year.
HR-focused managers instead of development managers.
Hiring freeze.
Travel freeze.
Rumors regarding closing locations other than Walldorf and St Leon Rot.
Replacement positions only in low-cost areas.
Anti-migrant sentiment.
Board compensation increasing dramatically each year.
Almost every German employment is offered solely in Walldorf and St Leon Rot.
Performance management is a reasonable approach to pay employees less.
No more catalyst or comparable schemes.
AI-first strategy, but showing no business development.
Organizational restructuring, such as HPOM, is built on influencer propaganda.
The stock price has plummeted.
Board says regular layoffs are non-negotiable without giving a good reason.
Stupid AI replacing important support, QA, IT and development functions instead of HR.
Employees coerced into giving their managers spectacular unfiltered reviews or forego salary increments.
Share buybacks.
Budget available for executive travel and entertainment but not development.
Stupid online courses instead of career focused learning by human experts.
Legal troubles.
Acquisition after acquisition without integration of acquired employees.
Only the same people getting the big jobs and promotions everywhere at SAP while others haven't found a new position in years.
You have to be a balding German white male based near Heidelberg to land a good management position.
Anti-women sentiment.
Executives openly making derogatory statements without any consequences - equating life altering career changes to brushing teeth.
CEO having no foresight or long-term plan to improve company and instead blatantly lying about things like "we'll create new 15000 positions in India" only to follow with layoffs everywhere.
Managers given so much power that it is more important to keep your managers happy than your customers happy.
Reduction in benefits.
Anti Muslim sentiment.
Week long party budget in some areas (Signavio) while other areas suffer and don't even have budget to hire development consultants.
Too many HR employees who in turn say we have too many QAs, developers, product managers, designers, etc.
Fake career progression plans as the only way to grow is to find another job.
Too many "innovation teams" that create stuff shown at Sapphire but it never makes it into production.

I can go on and on but this is already a long list.

What do you think? Do you share a similar sentiment? Do you agree or disagree with any of the items listed here? Having a good stable job without politicking seems almost hopeless at SAP.

In the past, points like these were enough to fire board members. But now the transfer of wealth and power from employees to executives is normalized. What can employees do to get back power and ensure a stable career at SAP?

I’m genuinely curious if anyone else wonders what’s going on with Nike’s HR function. The constant layoffs, reorgs, and shifting structures are confusing at best and destabilizing at worst. If HR can’t get things right for themselves, how are they supposed to get it right for the rest of the company?

In my experience working with that team, it’s a mix of highly competent people and others who are… not. Like many parts of Nike, it often comes down to who you know and how willing you are to step over others to get ahead.

The latest move…eliminating the head of Recruiting and burying the function should be a signal to everyone. Maybe the person in the role wasn’t the right fit, but that’s neither here nor there. The bigger concern is the direction of the function as a whole. It feels like we’re heading into a darker period, and the signs are all there.

From Reddit:
I'm not talking about the dough facilities. I'm talking about corporate staff.
There has been no notifications, no conversation, no announcements. I think this is standard operating procedure for a company that is currently being sued for failure to notify about layoffs.

Every day a different department has had people let go and by my count there are about 30 or so who have been let go. Some are offered early retirement, some are just called into a meeting with someone who is not their boss and that is that. Almost of them have been at Panera for more than 10 years. This is not who we are supposed to be but when someone shows you who they are, you should listen and so should we.

More than a few people have said that layoffs will continue until next week but no one actually knows because no one is actually saying anything. I think the only reason they are doing it this way is because they laid off a bunch of HR people last month. I'm sorry, they did not get laid off, they were told their jobs were moving to Boston and they could apply but they would get no bump in pay.

Here is what you need to do:

• Stay calm. The decision has been made and nothing you can do will change it.
• Give recommendations and get references. Have one last conversation with that friend or manager.
• Download or offload anything you want to keep. Performance reviews and letters that say you did a good job, those are yours, those belong to you. Anything you produced like reports or summaries of your work, save it, change some numbers and keep it because you want to remember what you did.
• Start looking for work now. This company is sinking and so are our opportunities.
• If you work in the office, bring a bag in tomorrow and be ready to walk out.

If you survive the cuts keep looking for work. This company is on its way down and it will not help your career to ride it out looking for a nice severance. Our sales have not been this low since the pandemic. The people in charge have zero understanding of what this company is.

This new rating system of forcing 20% below meet is this new?.
I am thinking it started with this era of new HR leader Bei.

I hope this is not some communist mentality of always causing anxiety among their workers.

So 15k is the number. Which is still short of the 20%. So most likely round 2 will be after January. Those lists were already made as most people suspected. If anyone has actual details on how the layoff procedure works from prior experience, please inform us is there an HR call is there a WebEx? And what are the details of the actual severance if there is any?

one out of every 10 will not be here after the following week. That will be one out of every five after January. Sad state of affairs.

Can you imagine any other workplace where an exec indulges in verbal thuggery?
Here the CTO uses abusive language at the drop of the hat.

What does the HR do?
Pretend like nothing ever happened.

Do we really need such utterly spineless HR guys?

P.S: I hope the HR folks get to read this.

It’s honestly a sign of how many entitled people we have here who are overly obsessed with wellness week. Working 9 to 5, in person, at your desk… with PTOs… is that really that difficult?

And for HR, if the goal is to let these naïve people out, raise the lifetime discount bar from 5 yrs to 10. You’d be surprised how many people would end up leaving, since that perk, along with wellness week is what so many seem to value the most.

https://www.seattleconsultinggrp.com/blog/when-hr-fails-the-hidden-enabler-of-toxic-leadership

I’ve retired, still not Medicare eligible and my insurance carrier is changing during COBRA. I don’t know why. I’ve called HR/Benefits 3 times, each time I speak with someone, they tell me that I will have answer within a few days. I had the one person create a ticket number, of course, no one informs me of anything. Today, when I called for the 3rd time, rep tells me the answer they put in the ticket was “insurance carrier changed”. No sh$$ sherlock, yes I know that, that’s what I’m asking is why did it change.
Would anyone know why it would change. Yes, my address changed to a different state, so I’m assuming that’s the reason why.

I was laid off Monday — in a 30-second phone call.

What doesn’t make sense is watching people with multiple ethics violations in a year keep their jobs. I guess being close with HR has its perks.

It’s frustrating when the people meant to protect confidentiality don’t, and when accountability seems optional. Those of us who try to do the right thing end up paying the price.

It’s disappointing, but my integrity is something no one can take from me. I’ll be okay — and I’ll always choose honesty over politics.

Way and his band of merry VPs and directors are leaving us all in peril, one more time.

"The hack job they did during the merger have led to a wave of dissatisfaction among investors, who are now seeking their rightful compensation. It remains to be seen who will ultimately bear the cost of these developments". This is clearly a straightforward decision, and HR is well-equipped to handle the situation effectively.

Happy bean soup Thanksgiving and merry humble pie for Christmas, y'all!

We are here to help and make you successful.
We'll help you on this forum too, we'll send positive vibes and will post positive comments and replies.
All will be fine VTeamers, respect for the individual and personal growth.
Rainbows.
Unicorns.
Happiness.
ONE TEAM!

Company: Condé Nast
Source: Human Resource Executive

When layoffs go viral: What HR can learn from Condé Nast’s Teen Vogue fallout
Summary: After folding Teen Vogue into Vogue.com, Condé Nast laid off six unionized Teen Vogue staffers, sparking protests and subsequent firings and suspensions. The piece outlines communication lessons for HR leaders to avoid similar blowups during workforce reductions.
City: New York
State: New York
https://hrexecutive.com/when-layoffs-go-viral-what-hr-can-learn-from-conde-nasts-teen-vogue-fallout/

The work laptops have tracking software running on them.

It logs things like:

• keystrokes
• emails sent
• time online

This information is being sent to HR for productivity reporting.

Just wondering if anyone has received the severance packet yet? HR told me that they’ll mail out after 11/3 but I haven’t got anything in my mailbox yet

This is something I’ve observed and was curious if others have seen the same. I’ve seen females rise faster within EJ home office than male colleagues. Obviously there are many males still being promoted and serving in leadership positions but is HR pushing gender as a reason to promote when all else is equal? Are others seeing this? Maybe just a small sample size.

I’m sure this will get downvoted and I’ll get ripped for even asking, but I’m genuinely curious.

We usually start doing our year end this time of the year in Workday. Somehow the performance review form is not available online. My manager asked everybody to write up performance review in a document this morning and send it to him. Very strange

HR at this company stopped being about people a long time ago, they love to talk about supporting employees, WLB, open communication. but try bringing them a real issue and see how fast they shut down. The second you speak up youre labeled as negative or not a team player. Totally useless. All effort is made to protect the higher ups and the co, nothing for the worker. Disgusting.

Use employee look-up like normally would, doesn't matter who

When results open select Detailed search. For Country use USA, then IND, then I think it was PHL

Will give you count for each country code.

I am trying to find my numbers from 2019.

HR and leadership teams remain intact despite large cuts to technical and customer service staff... They exist to serve themselves.