Thread regarding SAP layoffs

Is your home address updated in the SAP HR records (presumably for all comms) ? If not, update it now.
Did your home SAP office get updated due to the move (typically if it’s a different state or closer to another SAP office)?
Nobody informs the manager of a home move except informally as part of a sidebar conversation.
So the best thing would be to determine if you’re within the 40 mile radius or not (to the nearest SAP office) and when the discussion with the manager happens in March or whenever, you can indicate that you’re outside the radius (if truly do) and elect to WFH. I wouldn’t advise moving back unless you feel the rest of your team members are going to follow the 3 day RTO rule and you have a disadvantage. I bet everyone is trying to find ways of getting exceptions to the rule. Don’t act in a haste - more importantly, don’t ask. My 2c.

Basically, the role of the President of NA is purely from a sales perspective, so customers feel they are speaking with someone of importance.

Fact is that majority of employees in NA belong to global teams reporting to Board members other than Sales organization and most will take their guidance from their global team leadership.

Speaking from abroad, I am surprised that so many locations in North America do not report to the President of North America.

Can someone please advise, If all of these locations have their own management, then what is the President of North America responsible for?

Moving and WFH is always at your own risk. People who WFH permanently typically get lower pay raises and get left out of promotion opportunities than those on site.

Also in addition to SAP Labs, Global Marketing in NY/Hudson Yards does not report to NA President. There is separate management for Global Marketing from Chief Marketing Officer so the mail from NA president does not apply to us.

Because the situation in NY is extremely expensive where it can cost $50 or more per day to park a car we never had a directive that we had to be in the office. Majority of Global Marketing team members in Hudson Yards have always been remote and we will continue to work this way.

There is an area in SuccessMap called My Home Office plan. There was a rollout in early '23 that you could put in full home office and get it approved by your manager. Alternatively, there was a place in one of the HR tools to request that you are a fully virtual employee (back in the day). My guess is that you'll need to have the Home Office plan set in SuccessMap and your manager approve it so you don't have to commute/move.
If you moved without your manager's knowledge, I would expect a tough go at it to get them to approve anything.

Has anyone heard anything from the Works Council? It's been more than a day since this announcement was issued and I have heard nothing from them. It would seem to me that something of this magnitude would at least have had to been informed to them in advance.

It seems very strange that there has not been any official statement ( or at least I am not aware about it) from the Works council, especially for the German employees as to what is their position on this.

To the note below asking if NA employees are getting different exceptions, the answer is yes.

We all got a note yesterday from NA President which outlined blanket exception if the criteria of: "working in a business-approved Home Office location greater than 40 miles from an SAP office" is met . I f you can meet this, then you are exempted from having to RTO.

I think there are other people in the same situation, where based on the work from home policy, they made some type of move where they now cannot just immediately ( or even in the future) just return to the office.

This would have been much better done if there was first information gathered from all the employees as to who may have made a life changing move to a new location to see who could or could not easily just RTO and then based on this see what was really feasible.

I am of course assuming that the note from CK was on the "up and up" and not some disguise to get people to leave SAP so as to reduce HC.

If you are afraid that you may be given an ultimatum to go back to the office 3 days a week and you say you cannot do this, then I would suggest that best you speak with an attorney first ( get a "labor" attorney).

I suspect the question would be, did you have good reason to rely on the Flex Pledge to make this move and you probably need some legal input more than someone who may be familiar with the mail that came out to give you some guidance.

My laymen perspective is that a "pledge" is not equal to a written contract, but I don't want to give you bad advice... check with an attorney first (... and if you do, would be great if you post what info you received for everybody else. ) good luck.

If you are not officially listed as home office based then you are office based. Not sure which kind of control SAP will implement in NA but I heard in India they are doing a very close monitoring (manager / employee level). More to come in May when they will likely to enforce it somehow. Best course of action would be working with your manager to transition you to home office based and get it approved in the system or likely you will need to get a really good exception issues by your manager for not coming to office seeing you are listed as office based.

I just want to clarify for everyone in NA that the mail which came out from the NA president does not apply to those working in the Palo Alto SAP Labs organization.

We have our own management structure which is not associated with the SAP NA president responsibilities. So this mail should not represent this as the "NA Return to Office policy"

So far we have been discussing this in Palo Alto and no resolution yet. We have some very different circumstances here which don't exist in other parts of NA. Specifically given that we are in the peninsula the traffic which is crossing any one of the bridges to get over the Bay to silicon valley is horrendous. Just to go 25 - 30 miles from the mainland over one of the bridges could easily take 2 hours ( or more) one way.

So we will have to see if and how this return to office could apply to us, but to be clear the note which came out yesterday for NA excludes the Labs locations ( maybe also for Montreal as well?).

submit a ticket. then cross your fingers.

A number of people on our team in Europe are in the same situation. What we don't understand is that the URL to the pledge to flex document in Ck's mail, in FAQ section, states there would be no exceptions for long commutes, are NA employees being provided different exceptions in other emails?