OP,
There is a method to this madness...this is my take on upper management thinking:
Step1: Purge the "poor performers". Regardless of biz, we do not want them here.
Step2: Decide on biz/projects. The folks on impacted projects get vsp at this point. This way, we minimize the departure of "good people" from the favored projects.
And along the way.....give the old timers a little break...called ERP, and also roll back the site proliferation that has made it harder to manage the company.
Of course...by such heavy handed tactics(changing the rules to just 1 bad SSL in 2016) some good people will get impacted.....but we do not owe anything to anybody....this was a really hard decision for us(upper management) to take, so we have suffered as well.