Thread regarding Allstate Corp. layoffs

@cs Training is good. Relevant training is better. Giving your employees time to train is better still. Having a load of training videos on a platform but never giving your employees time to train is NOT good. Where's the face-to-face training? I contacted the training department about identifying some training courses and they were absolutely fu--ing clueless.

How can I allocate time to train when my responsibilities are twice as much as they were two years ago? I'm now my own production support team, required to take on production incidents on top of urgent project work and be on-call on a regular basis. I'm now my own DevOps engineer. I'm my own server consultant, required to look after my servers.

Training is good, but let's not pretend that this isn't PR spin.

Interesting thread. My two cents worth as a former employee who left a few months ago now. Training - appalling. We were told that we had to "Take responsibility for your own career development", or in other words do your own training in your own time. No work time was ever given to training - we were expected to upskill in advanced Java, ReactJs. cloud, MS Azure, Jenkins, Terraform and a good deal more. And as a managing engineer I had to balance that while supporting not just the developers who worked for me but other managing engineers as well. True the company give us some decent training resources to use but who has time to work a 37.5 hour week upskill in several different technologies and look after a young family as well. In the end I took my skills elsewhere, got a 40% pay rise, I get to work full time from home now as a developer without any management cr-p to worry about and I can request training time from my Project Manager who is happy to give me at least a few hours each month to upskill. And yes I have to agree, the OBD certs were shambolic and are nothing more than a way for highly paid managers to tick boxes in their appraisals and justify their continued existence to share holders. The only training I ever got there was to the benefit of managers and to the company.

Im going to take the opportunity...while also moaning and complaining. Im doing one of the training courses in November. Not looking forward to it to be honest but it's a taste of what potential new job may be

Have a look at the announcement and the types of training they are saying will be delivered - full-stack development, AI, cloud computing and cybersecurity.

Now have a look at recent press releases from other FDI companies and the roles they plan to create.

It is no coincidence that there is an overlap here.

See the bigger picture lads, this investment will provide real opportunities , either inside or outside of ani.

This is why govt money is being provided.

Invest ni are well aware of the head count changes over the years, they are hardly going to pump 16 million into a sinking ship.

Take the opportunity if it comes your way, or moan and complain and wait for your p45.

I know what I will be doing.

@dn “George Best”

@dn I’d hazard a guess that you’ve been with the company for less than 10 years, and likely still have a positive outlook for a future career there. You’re also correct in that honing your skillset is always beneficial.

From some of the responses here, the wider view of current employees, and I suspect some ex-employees contributing, is that the company cannot be trusted. There was an update from them today with the tagline “Investing in Our Greatest Asset - Our People”, and finishing with “We're proud to be investing in the people who make it all possible.”

In parallel, they’ve been throwing those great “assets” out the door at an alarming rate, over the last 4 years. Company loyalty is not something they value or respect, regardless of how many staged photo ops they put out celebrating their “greatest asset”.

Investing years of your life & career in this company, only to be discarded with minimal notice, has led to lot of bitterness, mistrust, and fear amongst your colleagues, as evidenced on this platform.

Today it’s dozens of them who are getting kicked out, tomorrow it could easily be you.

At no point did my post or the Irish News article mention OBD training.

If there is 16 million being invested in training, I hope I get the opportunity to benefit from it in some way.

If you think it is a bad thing then don’t avail and good luck to you in your job search if and when the time comes.

You seriously think that OBD bullsh-t is going to be useful anywhere else. Yeah gimme some industry recognised certifications... Imagine going to another company and saying you’ve a bronze cert in OBD. They’ll ask “What’s that?” and you’ll be proudly able to tell them about all the pointless boxes you’ve ticked to get an arbitrary made up thing.

My overarching point is they shouldn’t be getting credit for this when they’ve underhandedly laid off 700+ people in 4 years.

@cs In response to @CS, aka “George Best”.

@cs It’s not hard to spot a reply by an Allstate NI Manager, or HR contact, to try and put a positive spin on this.

Did you read the article, and compare it to what is happening? It states that Allstate NI has already “invested £6.5 million over the last two years in strengthening the digital skills of its staff. That investment, supported to the tune of £670,000 by Invest NI, has already repaid Allstate with the expertise needed to drive digital change”. During those two years, the company continued to reduce its workforce, with 278 employees being cut in 2024 alone. This approach has continued throughout 2025, with no sign of slowing, or stopping. This has been reported on by The Irish News, and Belfast Telegraph. That £670,000 from Invest NI wouldn’t even cover two year’s compensation costs for a single company director, and there are currently five active directors listed, including the current site lead.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/NI034636/officers

Look beyond the prodigious company PR output, to see what the company are actually doing, not what they’re saying.

Ok, very good, I stand corrected. Investing in staff training is a terrible idea.

Have you ever considered that this training might be useful to those who stay with Allstate and those who unfortunately end up out in the market due to redundancies ?

I don’t believe anyone said that this signals the end of redundancies, but you crack on deluding yourself that you shouldn’t need to keep your skills up to date.

@cs where have you been the past two years? What training, apart from their made up OBD cert cr-p, have you been provided with? If you seriously think this signals the end of the redundancies you’re very naive.

Also, as you brought it up, think it’s crazy that they’ve got £670k off Invest NI. For what? It’s actually a scandalous waste of tax payers money.

Finally to address your point about cost/benefit and risk analysis. This is Invest NI, maybe the one place with chair warmers posing as leaders who are more incompetent than our lot.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67005286

I won’t expect any of the doom prophets on here to agree but is this not a good news story? It might help prevent or reduce further layoffs. Surely you don’t think a government department will hand out that sort of funding without performing a risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis ?

Maybe the minister should be asking questions about the relentless redundancies instead of posing for a whitewashing publicity shot with the puppet in chief.

If you need 16 million to be Agile, you're doing it wrong.

@OP And yet the company continues to reduce its headcount significantly, with 278 jobs cut in 2024 and a total reduction of 467 jobs between 2019 and 2024. These reductions have been ongoing through 2025, with long tenured employees being a specific focus for senior management.

Employers are legally required to notify Stormont’s Department for the Economy if they are making 20 or more employees redundant within any 90-day period at a single establishment. Employees who are being terminated are presented with the option to resign with an enhanced package, which keeps the numbers below the mandatory reporting number.

In parallel “the remuneration for its five directors increased by 57% from £253,343 to £398,387 - within remuneration, the most substantial increase was in directors' emoluments, up from £222,815 to £344,365”.

Employee morale is at an all time low, particularly for those long term employees who helped build this company locally.