Thread regarding CVS layoffs

As a Finance colleague it is amusing to hear Tom talk about improving efficiencies and reduce redundancies, as I am forced to participate in several projects and process changes that add complexity and overhead to already convoluted and terrible processes.

It was a lot of 'read between the lines' language. Second the person who said I understand you want a positive spin for mental health/sanity sake. But, the reality of it is, 'proving value' and them essentially evaluating positions based on that just means they are looking for redundant positions and where they can make do without in some areas.

It is very likely that we will see whole teams rid of, especially if another team already does similar tasks. The hard truth is they will just assume that the other team can absorb the work no problem.

All anyone can do right now is:

1. Polish their resume and start applying outside if they are in fear of their position being eliminated (or if you are just tired of the company)

2. Do what you can to continuously 'prove your value' everyday for the next probably 2 - 3 years, if they want to stay

Unlike intel who was deliberate and got all the bad news out in one Dell swoop, Karen is death by thousand paper cuts and keeping the company on edge because they have no real plan. Mark of a terrible leader is that they cannot act decisively and always seem to be caught offguard.

@may+1u0fesed I also recall them using the words "workforce optimization." This sounds like corpospeak for "You're fired. There, I optimized."

My biggest takeaway was her being in KY is more telling than anything.

Gov of KY is big on healthcare/medicaid. Could it be that she is there to save face in hopes of saving KY Medicaid for Aetna?

Tom also made a weird “joke”/comment about a “check for Mr Beshear” as soon as it went to him. I suspect she’s there to try to save another L for Aetna.

I can understand that none of us want to be laid off, so trying to put a positive spin on the CVS mess might help mentally, a little, it does nothing to prevent the 5k+ “colleagues” that will get the ax in less than two months. Fact. We all need to be jumping ship as soon as possible and leave Kare Ly--h to pretend she’s the greatest person since Jesus. She’s a washed up money grabber.

2 key takeaways for me. 1) there will be orgs or teams that would be eliminated as a whole (Shadow orgs, stop doing certain things, getting out of certain areas). 2) I don't remember the exact statement but for me it alluded to that VPs/Ex. Dirs have been asked to prepare list of people where a role can be eliminated and work assigned to other members of the team (it was in same talk as doing more with less).
So yeah, a lot of positive spin but hard decisions to come. I have a feeling that we've dodged the Q3 layoff bullet and next wave will likely hit in October now. I may be wrong as ELT has bought a lot of leeway by saying 2B in savings over next two years (and 500MM in short-term) without specifics.

todays townhall is a joke. when Tom said continue what you are doing. I mean, how can we continue doing this waiting game when we don't see a ray of hope of what is in store for us. They could have as well said some percentage of layoffs across the organization

If you didn’t catch the hint of layoffs I don’t know what to tell you. It was obvious during Tom’s segment that layoffs are coming. You don’t talk about stopping doing work, getting out of business segments entirely, even as vaguely as he did, without that translating into some people in the future no longer working for CVS Health

The important part is how KL eluded to layoffs in earnings call. It was when talking about the $500m and how it will come from Optimizing processes, acceleration of AI and automation across the company. These are all key words to hint on reduction of staff. Also Tom said it in town hall today “do more with less” focus on “efficiency”.

Total waste of time especially given Karen was effectively MIA. This place is a mess.

The town hall today was confusing. They spun the stock price as somehow being good because it could be worse even though it is down 30% YTD, didn’t bother discussing layoffs even though they could of said it is or is not happening, talked about a shadow company that will be eliminated by Karen and Tom, said it is positive that RTO is at 50% participation which they think is good (the 50% going to the office would disagree) and a bunch of feel good stories about how CVS helps in the time of need. I walked away from the town hall feeling it could have been 30 minutes and the rest of the call was wasted time.

I did not pick up on any layoff vibes. I am still hoping they offer voluntary separation with severance 🤷🏻‍♀️

The town hall was BORING though. Nice humanitarian story with Hawaii but other than that not very inspiring or interesting. Was also pretty entertaining when someone asked if strategy was changing, and the response was absolutely the strategy stays the same. But uh, send us ALL your ideas!!

that depends on your definition of "allude", of course they will not say the word "layoff", remember last year just before the layoff, karen ly--h used the phrases such as "hard decisions", "new model", "transformation" in the townhall meeting