Thread regarding ADP layoffs

There may be an explanation about this insanity!

There may be an explanation about this insanity, although if true it is irresponsibly scary. I worked for ADP for many years. Most companies are client-centric in that the client is King and everything has to be done to keep them satisfied. It is a sound strategy because that is where the money and profit come from. But with my long tenure with ADP, I found them to be employee-centric and not in a good way. The client was pushed aside and an attempt was made to extract as much work as possible from salaried employees who were not paid for the overtime hours they put in. Focusing on the client, improving processes, and building a superior workforce was not deemed important. Employees were not crosstrained or seriously trained for their jobs. There was some training but was sporadic and seemed to be an inconvenience to management. We once had to go through 8 days of training. Each training day was a full 8 hours. We were told that while we were going through this training, we still had to put in at least 8 hours of our regular work on top of the training day - a total of 16 hours a day!

As new processes, and systems would be developed and had to be supported, management would frantically throw employees this way and that, trying to get them to support the new products without any real training. When year end would come, management seemed to be caught unprepared for it. Every year! When I went through my first year end, I heard management screaming "Oh no! It's year end! There is so much work coming in! What are we going to do?" This would happen every year, and I would think that they have gone through year end for many years, yet they are astounded by it and completely unprepared EVERY YEAR END! Perhaps that was an act put on to get people to work even more overtime hours. But if it was it certainly did not look good and made management look like idiots. But who cares what employees think? The company does not exist to please them.

So while ADP is employee-centric, it is only about how many overtime hours the employees put in. No other employee or workforce concerns are seriously addressed. Upper management also hates it's employees, wants them to be scared, and to know their place.

Now my point to this ADP craziness in laying off an astounding number of employees. In 2015, before these expanded layoffs started, many people started quitting in the office that I was working at. I saw upper management become enraged at this. Only they should have the ability to kick people out. Employees should not leave on their own. I don't know how much this hatred played in ADP deciding that since their employees don't know their place, we'll just kick everyone out and get new ones. This idea does sound crazy, but I cannot think of any other explanation for this fatal decision.

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| 3291 views | | 2 replies (last May 22, 2017) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+Nm83UEE

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I worked a total of 5 hellish years at ADP. Very management centric produce no matter what environment. Work life balance was a joke - more than half of ee's have accrued so much unused vacation time they'll never use it. Also a very white, male oriented hierarachy. Rules were shifted for favorites - such as the GM who has no college degree while some poor CSM is turned down for promotion for only having a two year degree. Pretty insidious racism existed in my location - the one African American Mgr was never promoted to Director no matter how great his numbers. And on and on.... I was so stressed out I became seriously ill and disabled. When I ended up hospitalized NOT ONE SINGLE Person even sent a card or flowers or anything. My boss actually hinted after my return that my trip to the ICU for 4 days was "faked"! If you are disabled, have ANY medical or family issues or actually decide to not live at the office, you were targeted. If you didn't skip lunches and work till 8-9 pm you were labeled a slacker! When layoffs began I started to think here's my chance. They were still expecting folks to bust a-- despite their jobs disappearing.... by then I was so fed up I resigned with zero notice and took my severance and ran that day. I still have nightmares about my time there. Brutal environment and very cut throat.

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Post ID: @3plw+Nm83UEE

This is the original poster and I wanted to add some more information which makes ADP'S crazy layoff and replacement plan, done for whatever reason, look even more crazy.

In 2015, before this employee replacement scheme was started, things were already not good from a client and employee perspective. Client service was horrible and a lot of work was shipped to ADP India associates where it was done badly and frequently had to be redone by US associates. Despite the repeated failures of the India associates OVER A PERIOD OF YEARS, work was still stubbornly sent to them by our management. Clients were fuming at the shoddy work done. US associates were forbidden to reveal to our clients that the failed work was done offshore. Nevertheless, many clients found out about India doing the work and became more enraged. Some clients had a notation placed in their contracts with ADP that all their work had to be done by US based employees.

In 2015, the last full year that I worked for ADP, we started to hear talk that clients were leaving us at an unprecedented rate, and that there were more clients leaving than coming in. This was scary, and I hoped that I would make it to retirement before the bottom fell out. Not the best position to be in, either for the company or for an employee.

To add fuel to the fire, as I had said previously, ADP did not crosstrain it's employees well, and had a reactive rather than proactive approach to filling positions. There was no meaningful succession planning done. At least in my office of about 200 people, we started to have a lot of people in their 50's and early 60's, and not many young people anymore. The youngsters had aged and most of the current young people had left. Five to ten years down the road, a slow catastrophe would start as many employees would start to retire.

So quickly hire more? Yes, but that is not a quick fix. The work is very specialized and it requires a new employee (no matter how smart) SEVERAL YEARS before they can be truly productive employees. Also much of the work is done on proprietary systems which makes it very unattractive for young potential new hires to be involved in. But that is another problem for another time.

So in 2015 ADP was already in a serious bind with clients flying out the door and an older workforce that had been neglected, and no real succession plan. At that point it may already have been too late to save the company, but the following should have been attempted:

Start focusing on clients and make every effort to satisfy and retain them.

Make ADP an employee - friendly company. Recruit new, young talent and train them well to make them as productive as possible in the shortest time period possible and offer older employees perks to stay with the company past retirement age. No more mind games. No more intimidation. Make ADP an outstanding place to work.

Still probably too late, but worth a try anyway. The actual "solution" that ADP is implementing of gutting it's experienced workers and replacing them with untrained people now guarantees it's demise even faster.

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Post ID: @elf+Nm83UEE

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