When will a new round of layoffs happen at Follett? What's your prediction?
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Very sad day indeed.
It’s a sad day. We lost a very good RM. WHY WEREN’T THEY OFFERED ANOTHER RM JOB?????????
Tomorrow is the last day for many people in the company. Say your goodbyes and then return to submit to the new regime. Remember, all the problems of Follett are everyone else’s fault, not the current leadership.
Deck chairs on the Titanic
30 hrs for FT staff with rental check in, buyback and graduation for some schools. No temps, no PT staff. I'm currently looking for another job but in my area nobody pays $19 an hr.
Region count cut by 25% overall and more store count for remaining RMs. Most regions eliminated were current openings, some RMs moved to the home office, and others were eliminated. Sad day for Follett as they lost some incredible people who were focused on changing the culture for the better. Some large contracts will be hard to keep because of the change but I’m sure the GVPs will love their new job of contract retention.
From our Friday call, they are adding 2 more GVPs groups and more regions not less.
Everyone will know for sure tomorrow at the company wide meeting. Stay tuned…
Of the RMs named, I beileve they are all RMs who have been promoted within the past few years and not long time RMs. Might make sense it’s these RMs if they are cutting some which is an AWFUL decision. They need more regions, not less.
How had you heard about those RMs being let go? Nothing has been announced publicly and I haven't heard from my RM, who is one of the initials you mentioned. (Well, assuming it's the same one.)
I can confirm RM positions have been significantly reduced and remaining region store counts are being increased. RMs PP, KK, and MB have been fired. I work for MB and haven’t heard anything from him but supposedly it’s been announced publicly?!? Can someone confirm?? If true this is a very bad decision
Be nice to each other here, this forum is the only civil idea exchange we have
Also, can we just celebrate @2kai+1glU42a9 for calling out the CM team and the entire tower shenanigans haha!
Should we bet who it was?
But would Follett not provide value at that point? Or maybe the value is pulling together all the vendors for the different areas? I know conversations are going on about closing stores or moving to FA, just didn’t know it was about the outsourcer outsourcing.
Actually there's negotiations going on as we speak with a majority of the campuses. They're basically going over their options. The problem is nobody wants to manage it. Colleges don't have time to police employees in any type of retail environment. That's how Follett got in in the first place. The latter would be to completely outsource. Follow would make the vendor responsible, and the colleges would not have to manage. No different than a major sports arena outsourcing their security, maintenance, cleaning people, and food vendors.
Tell us more? From a credible source? Not sure I full understand both models mentioned.
Ya’ll are to funny. I would agree that it is not one of us, as they just targeted previous leaderships old team from what I can tell and strangely not any of Course Materials team where there are three directors, and three VPs. Either it was posted by one of them as a power move due to fear of them getting fired because of the changes or they are doing an excellent job so the poster did not mention them.
My team and I have dealt with TH and BM often for example and outside of making me feel stupid, providing me with a checklist like a child, or belittling my team and I, it was a great experience. The entire tower needs cleaning from top to bottom again, they are not even savvy enough to balance out their insults to avoid getting themselves caught insulting each other ha.
The plan is to start posting RFPs sometime in late 2023 and being fully outsourced by 2025 by a third party management company. This eliminates any need for human resources and having to provide insurance and benefits. A second plan is an effect as well to allow colleges to keep running the bookstores in house, and essentially ordering all book related material from various suppliers. This is supposed to take effect in spring of 2024.
"but don’t pretend to be one of us"
I did not know that the bad management only affected some and not others. Can got print out an org chart of who "us" and "them" are so we all know who's on what side?
You are worried about those people but fail to mention all the new C promotions? So you either are one of them, or you are the pet of one of them, but don’t pretend to be one of us to sort out your vendetta with them. Our new CBDO has two, count two, direct reports but you make no mention and you are worried about the above. Rumor in the east region is that a separate VP will be joining to do just FA sales, but again no mention and you are worried about the above. The labor is said to be cut by 15-25M for stores, but again no mention and you are worried about the above. Nothing in your statement says you are one of us field people actually suffering, so stop pretending. Again, you are one of the two mentioned above other wise you would of noted the actual impacts to us.
There are several vp positions that can be combined into 1 position. Like Digital Operations and Ed Tech & Academic Programs. Come on 2 VPS and we have the cr---y programs that we have. FA is a nightmare. Chief Stores Officer/President/EVP Retail Ops - What, we are just giving people titles. There has to be some overlap of duties here. Hopefully these 3 are all on the same page or we are going to have the same issues that we did when CW, RM and JH were trying to run the show. Then you have CP PR & Campus Marketing and VP Sales Marketing. Hmmm...really...1 vp salary can't cover these duties? So far, still looking like the same old company. EK will need to bring something other than we need to measure what our guest think. If the "One Team Call" is going to be only about customer surveys, I am jumping off the call. Worry more about keeping your team happy and then you wouldn't have to worry about what our guests think!
I can’t wait to get laid off. None of us make enough to survive. I’ll get some quality time off, and the ability to carefully find new employment.
You never know at this point. Looks like it’s a lot of home office down to RMs. Hope the GVPs are impacted - just a worthless position.
Any word on if there will be store manager layoffs?
Notifications are being sent today
Happening as we speak at the Tower and heard through this week and next week for us and HO. And look at the Quad. We now have a lot of Chiefs under EK but no Indians to do the work in our stores. Interesting that we have a new Chief of Stores, SB.
Same story, different group? Bet adding more VPs is next and then labor will be cut.
Where are you seeing FT staff getting less than 30 hours in May?
I think he will either mention layoffs on the call on Monday or we will see them at some point in May. How else would you explain full-time staff getting less than 30 hours next month? They are either going to be laid off, made part-time, or forced out of the company.