I wanted to share a theory and get your thoughts on whether it makes sense. I’m a Business Analyst who was recently laid off on 10/17, and I had also been laid off back in March, but that layoff was later rescinded. After that, I was moved to a completely different team and organization under the reasoning that there was a “business need.” However, after joining the new team/org, I was repeatedly told that there was nothing for me to do and that they were “trying to find work” for myself and other BA’s who had been laid off and moved to this team. For months, we had no assignments or clear responsibilities.
Fast forward..Just had a “redeployment meeting and I was given a spreadsheet that listed open reqs within the clinical enterprise organization and I noticed that there were no BA positions listed, which confirms my suspicion that BAs are not typically utilized in the clinical space. This seems to support my theory that me and a couple of other BA’s (also, rescinded and laid off again) were used as placeholders to help a director (that I was reporting to after offer rescind) meet her quota of direct reports at the director level.
It seems likely that director knew she would be posting requisitions in a few months. In a recent org meeting, they shared that most of those requisitions had now been filled, with only a few remaining open. Now that the new hires are in place, the director has probably met the direct reports quota required of her. This could explain why we were let go and no longer needed to fill those vacancies temporarily.
Given the time it takes for requisitions to be approved and roles to be filled, it feels like we were just “there” until their hiring goals were met. This allowed them to avoid questions from HR about being a director with only 5-6 direct reports(which is how many direct reports they had prior to us joining her team)
This is Optum y’all, deception, poor resource management, manipulative, and misusing employees! I am disgusted.