Thread regarding SAP layoffs

@eha+1qJ6iINQ

Good post....

"Hasso didn't need to be omnipresent to the people here. Everybody was happy."

I definitely remember the shouting matches in WDF's cantina between Hasso and employees about ByDesign. We have had an almost never-ending string of big scale failures and small scale fiefdoms in which anyone could do whatever the heck they wanted.

Just look at our market cap and compare that to the others out there. It's time to get our a-s in gear as a company. Su-ks for us employees, but please.

I heard they are hoping for 13000 overall.

Its 8000 plus however many that are non-compliant with the RTO. It will be more than 8000.

A new day it is ? - it absolutely is!!

I don't care if the Pope got on our Executive Board, I no longer would believe a single word they push out.

All trust and loyalty is gone from this company!!

Some of my team organized an internal call after we got the news about this 8k employee restructure. FYI of our summary:

• Surely the voluntary buyouts will be VERP, clever that they did not provide any number as to who was eligible  or in which countries this would apply to.  They obviously know the ages of all employees. years of service, etc... and like was done in 2018 when we last did this, we had outside consulting company guide the company thru this process as it was dealing with a protected  age group and they need to be careful about possible lawsuits.  So it is interesting they  obviously know down to the last individual who is in this group but provided no context as to how many  will it include, not even a rough number. 

• Was no detail as to "how and who" would be making decisions as to whose job is in focus for  " reskilling".  Another way of saying this is that your current job has been eliminated and "maybe" you get an opportunity for reskilling.

• Does "reskilling" also mean "relocation ( to low cost) and also pay cut ?  For sure  this is a yes, so basically the new position we re-skill you for is yours if you want to move to another continent and take a 60% pay cut.

• Finally the clever statement that we will have the same headcount by year end as we have now is just another way of fulfilling Punit Renjen's vision of expansion into India.  No magic here, it's just plain and simple - yes we take  8000 jobs out of high cost countries and shift them to India and in the end of course we  will still have the same HC,  but for the unfortunate 8K whose jobs disappeared, they will have to find new livelihood someplace else

Why does it need to be this way - why all the mystery ?   Is this new version of SAP incapable of just being honest with the employees who have worked here for decades for the company?      Just come out and be honest and  tell us according to the vision of the new chairman ( who most likely got this position based on this cost cutting/job transfer strategy)  that this is Wave #1 of  SAP job relocation program and in the end we want to shift 25% or 25, 000  of SAP jobs to India and then let us move on and plan our career accordingly and take the necessary steps to protect ourselves and families.

@esa+1qJ6iINQ - Sorry but you don't have the foggiest idea of what you are talking about.

• Punit is not responsible to communicate with employees. Actually, he is not allowed to do so by very nature of his role. From where did you pull this BS from? I guess then it must have been the ghost of Hasso ( or Dietmar before him) when in past years they spoke to the employees or maybe nobody told them they were not allowed to do this??

How do you know what are Punit's responsibilities? Were you part of the selection committee?

Quite frankly there was not really a need for Hasso to speak that often to the employees since he took over chairman in 2003. I joined SAP in late 90's when the company had only about 15k employees and we have done nothing but grow YOY. The company was always a very stable operation and we had not to worry about layoffs, and was YOY rated consistently as best place to work, pay and bonus were always fair, so Hasso didn't need to be omnipresent to the people here. Everybody was happy.

What I know is that the company is changing in a big way and now becoming increasingly more and more anxious and frustrated each day about the changes coming down, which all now coincide with Punit taking over.

If Punit Renjen wants in 3 months to take over Chairmen of a company that has deteriorated badly, then I fully agree with you - he should not communicate at all with the employees about what is happening to the company we all work for and he needs to also make sure that CK also shares no real communication either.

Day to day business at company is not run by supervisory board, but by executive board members.
Punit is not responsible to communicate with employees. Actually, he is not allowed to do so by very nature of his role.
Ofcouse he will talk to executive board directly and give ideas, but cannot force any decision.

In the new “Flex Work FAQ” document, unfortunately, it states “when employees submitted a home office status in Success Map, they were required [to agree to the terms] that arrangements may be changed…regardless of your Success Map Home Office Setting, this new global guidance now applies.”

I have to say I am not getting any good feelings with our incoming Chairman. It's not like he has yet to start with SAP as he has been Deputy Chairman since 8 months ago. However he has yet to have an all hands broadcast to give a proper introduction of himself.

We heard in this youtube video he did last summer that he was already working with CK on SAP topics, like increasing the HC in India. To be clear, there is no increasing HC in India UNLESS there is reduction of HC in other geographies. But yet, there is still no attempt on his behalf to come out and address all of the 100K employees as to what his vision is.

He says on the video that while at Deloitte they moved 100K position to India. That represents about 25% of the Deloitte workforce. He says, quite matter of fact in the video, that he can assure us that Christian is already working hard to increase SAP presence in India. But still we have yet to hear directly from him as to what exactly is his plan, but apparently CK knows about it.

Now we can see, it is clear he was behind these communications about changing WFH and then couple of days later we get some vaguery that imparts we will restructure 8K people but no specifics as to how this breaks down as to who is expected to take voluntary leave, who is up for reskilling, and how many will be laid off. But still we have yet to hear from him directly as to exactly what is his plan.

This was never how SAP was run in the past, it now appears that we have evolved into some sort of cloak and dagger operation, where the main decision maker who has been on the job for 8 months has had zero contact with the entire employee base, but is hard at work at redesigning the company

You know, I don't care how many books, publications, etc I get my hands on, every single one of them will tell that the first rule of Leadership, is communication. How does someone in Renjen's spot not know this??? It can only be that he is deliberately avoiding the employees because he is working on things that it's best we do not know about.

I hope I am wrong, for everybody's sake, but I have to say that thus far, I don't like at all what I am seeing coming from the person who will occupy the Chairman's office.

And in my case I was WFH before we started using Success Maps to this level of utilization - was not aware at all about this option in SM.

More importantly, our manager never told us that we needed to fill this out in Success Maps. if this is now the litmus test, it would seem that the obligation of the company was to tell all of us who were WFH that we needed to complete these sections in SM, which of course they did not.

Bottom line is that the new leadership of the company is creating a very tense atmosphere thru out the organization and it is difficult to trust what you hear and even less confidence that with the announcements today you can feel that you will be dealt with fairly.

I see it as a new culture, where the motto is: If you don't like your job, then you should think seriously about leaving the company.

Thanks for the info, but still the point remains that this was not in CK's mail or in NA president office mail. No where was it mentioned that "prior approval" had to be the option provided in Success maps.

I am sure that there will be those who say they had their manager's approval, others will say they were grandfathered in, etc...in an attempt to demo they had approval - and in another world, they would all be correct.

It really comes down to the Trust factor and whether the employees trust they will be dealt with fairly. So when the company made a pledge that you could "flex work" from anywhere and people built their work location based on this premise and then the same company broke this pledge and then also did not clarify in the rescission mail that the success map option would be the acceptable proof of having previously established an approved home office, should we really trust this company any more?

Thx for the info, but I am not at all convinced that posting something in success maps will be the determining factor in who can continue WFH. They have been intentionally vague about these topics so they can enforce them as they wish. Trust is entirely gone.

Regarding “full home office approved” - you can find that information in your success map . Go to the office section , and there are really 3 options there . One of them being full home office . Many here had that approved before COVID and it stays the same