Thread regarding ADP layoffs

I understand that a great deal more than 35% took the ERP. At least 2/3 and possibly as much as 80%. I use the range because exaggerations often happen. In any case, unlike the coyote in the roadrunner cartoons, we knew what the light coming from the back of the tunnel meant. Best wishes to all that left and even more to those that remained.

I find it strange the absence on Internet activity on this topic. The big date with the rest of the retirements is coming up soon on March 1, 2019. That is when the actual service representatives retire.

WHAT A MESS....typical servicing issues. Plan participants are given one ADP number to call and it is a generic switchboard that can't help. The prompt continues to ask for an ee id and the old one won't work. When you get thru to HR they have a lot of " I don't know" responses and keep telling you to call Wage Works who then tell you to call ADP. The Cobra conversion plan is messed up. Associates who had Kaiser were sent information for another insurance plan and ADP has been trying weeks to correct it. It will be interesting to see if the financial transactions happen.

It is very unlikely that this 55+ offer will be extended again. Already more people than ADP expected took this offer.

How do you know they won't offer again?

Congrats to all who were offered this retirement package. This is a once is a lifetime opportunity. I know many 54 year old's that are upset they will never get this offer.

Outsourcing more and more. They think they don’t need your experience. The Dominos will start to fall

I accepted the offer almost immediately, and just last week learned my last day will be June 1st. My young team mate is struggling to learn how to take over all my responsibilities in the remaining time.

I haven't disliked the culture at ADP at all. They have been slow to adopt modern development methods and technologies, and senior management were very slow to accept that the cloud is inevitable, and mainframes are not the most cost effective solution anymore, but they are making progress.

I have had an uncomfortable relationship with my boss, but stuck around mostly because of the high pay, normal office hours, and short 4 mile commute. But if ADP is going to throw a large chunk of money at me to find a better boss elsewhere, I figure what the heck. There are plenty of openings in my field in this city.

I agree with the last poster and I agree with what your saying as an employee with over 20+ years at ADP. Unfortunately , you won't be able to convince the others that what is currently happening is not a good thing for the company or the remaining and new employees.

Ok, if no one is trying to muzzle anyone that's fine. However, I stand by the information that I have presented. Let's let the ADP associates decide who is right and who is wrong.

Why are you so concerned with what is posted here? If the majority of information that is presented on this site is false then there is no need to worry. ADP associates will take note the lies and either stop looking at this site or they won't take the information that is presented here seriously. Let the people decide.

Hey, I'm not who you were responding to, but let me just say this. No one is trying to muzzle anyone. You can't on a site like this, but he/she is just calling you out for saying things that are just inaccurate and fed by emotion. I appreciate your BA background, and have a lot of respect for what BA's do, but your access to strategic information is limited, and it shows in your posts. Are you trolling? I don't know. Its that or you actually believe what you are posting. In either case, others, including me have a right to call you out. I was in a position as a 20 year associate and VP level to have access to the strategy decisions. I actually know what the strategy is. I don't agree with all of it, but frankly, ADP has no choice but to cut costs and make this work. If they don't, an Ackman type group will take over and they will do far worse.

I took the early retirement package. I got word today my retirement date is June 1st. I got the date on a call from upper management, not my immediate boss. He was kind and expressed his gratitude for my contribution to the company. ADP is the company I work for but it is not my responsibility to make the tough decisions. I don’t know If I could have made the tough decisions. I hold no grudge and am appreciative for the offer they gave instead of the six month severance. When I started, everyone in my region with my job were new and so was the support team. ADP survived and I think they will pull through this. Everything has to evolve to survive.

I seem to be trolling? I have a right to offer my views here just like anyone else.

Narrow view and outdated facts? Completely ridiculous. I have contacts within ADP and have quite a broad view of what is happening. I am a trained business analyst who is very careful with facts.

I am enjoying my retirement and now have the time to speak my mind. I will say what I want and whenever I want. I will not be muzzled nor try to muzzle others.

Just look at the posts here on this site. The vast majority of them support my point of view not yours. Are you going to try to muzzle the others as well?

My last day has not been given to me but I can assure all that ADP's mainframe technical staff has been destroyed. This is a major mistake. After 31 years I consider myself an mainframe expert and I am convinced ADP is doomed. Even outside vendors (IBM, EMC, CA, etc.etc.) cannot believe what has happened.

Nobody teaches mainframe technologies.....no college or university. The mainframe world takes decades to learn. ADP has cut its throat and will not be able to survive. If anyone has 31 or more years experience (28 with ADP) in the mainframe world, tell me how ADP can support their core mainframe payroll business without the long term 20-30 year associates who are the only ones who know the ADP way of data processing and cloud/ storage management. The new ADP hires have never even seen a mainframe computer in their lives! ADP has no idea of what they just did by letting go of all of us long term mainframe people. No clue at all.....goodbye ADP!

You seem to be trolling anyone who has anything positive to say about the company using your narrow view and outdated facts. Enjoy your retirement, you obviously have no reason to speak here since you weren't affected by the recent decisions.

Corporate culture changes from the top not the bottom. It is the top leadership that decides where to take the company. Middle management, lower management, and line employees don't get to decide what corporate culture they are going to have. Whatever the top management decides, the lower level employees have to say "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma' m" to orders from above.

Plus you really walked into this one. I am bitter? Certainly not. I am comfortably retired from ADP and am enjoying my golden years earlier than I expected with enough money to last for the rest of my life. Bitter? No. Do not make assumptions about people you do not know.

Also, employees with 20 or 30 years are experts. You don't get rid of them before you have a chance to replace them with a quality workforce. ADP didn't do that. Their workforce is now horribly substandard and most of the experts are gone.

So these 20 - 30 year veterans tell management "No" for calls for innovation? Come on, do you do tell management no when they tell you to do something? If you do then you get fired. When I was working at ADP for 28 years, when management said jump my colleagues and I said how high?

So from your flawed logic, you obviously don't know what you are talking about and perhaps you are shill for ADP. At any rate, since you dared to say that I am bitter I am going to say that you are mindlessly promoting ADP without any supporting facts or reasoning.

you are incorrect, you change culture through strategic initiatives like this. You can have the best strategy in the world however if your front line field reps don't act on that strategy then your strategy will fail. There's more overturn at ADP than just CSRs and people on the phones, there's plenty of leadership being fired or retiring. I think you're bitter about how this impacted you personally and while you have every right you shouldn't make assumptions based on a narrow scope.

Also, Benz did reduce size through a similar location strategy and retirement package, they produce a consumer product the same as ADP. Although the products are different the strategy is the same and whether we're talking payroll, cars, or widgets if you can't stay competitive if you have people who are with the company 20 or 30 years telling you no at every turn when you want to innovate. Oh and by the way, when people are making 150K+ a year and they aren't performing that's a good reason they shouldn't stick around.

What's happening is typical corporate bloodshed which stinks but up until this point ADP has been more like a government agency with people acting like they have permanent job security rather than a reason to perform. Let us call it like it is, if you found yourself on a list to be let go, there's probably a reason for it unless your location is being shut down.

To the one who agreed with the previous poster:

"The biggest problem with ADP up until now has been the culture"

I agree with this statement. But the way you change the culture is to replace top leadership and management, and NOT line employees who provide daily service to clients. These line employees have no say in the corporate culture yet they are the ones that are being replaced, not top management types like the CEO Carlos Rodriguez. You don't get any changes in the culture by replacing employees and lower and middle management.

"Mercedes Benz went through this not long ago...ADP will be fine."

ADP is not Mercedes Benz. Mercedes Benz makes cars. ADP provides payroll/personnel products and services. They are not similar in what they make and deliver.

ADP got rid of its talent pool of experts and replaced them with newbies who are not experts of any kind and are low wage workers. It would be the same if Mercedes Benz got rid of its certified, talented and experienced automotive engineers and replaced them with low wage people who are not engineers of any kind, just people off the street who don't know anything about cars. Yet these newbies would be expected to design, produce, and test new cars, learning on the job for very low wages. I don't think that is what Mercedes Benz did.

I don't think ADP will be fine. I don't think this company will be fine at all.

I agree with the previous poster. The biggest problem with ADP up until this point has been the culture. It's been so long that ADP has through itself to be the 800LB gorilla that could win over any client by walking into the room and saying, "hey, we're ADP" but those times are over. We have to change the way we think, do business, innovate, and develop. And part of that process is to change the culture which unfortunately requires a bit of staff overturn. It's extremely sad that people are losing their jobs and wow, I count myself lucky that I'm not among them every day but business is business. Mercedes Benz went through this not long ago and you still see people driving those cars. ADP will be fine.

**PREVIOUS POST WAS NOT COMPLETE

The early retirement package is: 3 wks gross pay * number of years at ADP. That amount goes to your pension (ADP stopped providing a pension in 2014 or so). You can purchase health benefits for 2 years at your current rate.

Now to reply to this: "Lots of nonsense here. ADP is far from being perfect. But in my experience, it is the old ways of doing business what's killing the company. Lack of innovation and lots of tenured associates resisting to change."

ADP has always tried to improve, but they failed to put enough time and money into R which is pitiful. Most of these new associates don't answer emails from co-workers or clients, they don't have answers to anything, and they don't seem to be fully trained or have an appropriate support network. It is horrible working with most of them, but a few are good, around 25%.

We have continued to lose existing clients. Our approval ratings from clients have plummeted: Service Center Responsiveness is -50 and only +30, Service Team Knowledgeable is -29 and +20. On a recent townhall, Debbie Dyson said these low scores were "a mystery to her". Its clear that she is not a student of Sherlock Holmes.

The early retirement package is: 3 wks gross pay * number of years at ADP. That amount goes to your pension (ADP stopped providing a pension in 2014 or so). You can purchase health benefits for 2 years at your current rate.

Now to reply to this: "Lots of nonsense here. ADP is far from being perfect. But in my experience, it is the old ways of doing business what's killing the company. Lack of innovation and lots of tenured associates resisting to change."

ADP has always tried to improve, but they failed to put enough time and money into R which is pitiful. Most of these associates dont answer emails from co-workers or clients, they don't have answers to anything, and they don't seem to be fully trained or have an appropriate support network. It

We have continued to lose existing clients. Our approval ratings from clients have plummeted. On a recent townhall, Debbie Dyson said the low scores were "a mystery to her". Its clear that she is not a student of Sherlock Holmes.

Not sure if we will find out how many retirement packages were accepted but they said in the 8K filing that they needed at least 3500, if under that there will be additional cuts for sure.

More cuts?? Which office? What role specifically?

More cuts this week. 60 day notice given.

Hope I am making the right decision by taking the offer.

No unemployment benefits as it is voluntary retirement.

They're most likely going to report it as a RETIREMENT event, if they're smart, so unemployment won't apply.

Can you collect unemployment with this early retirement pkg? Since layoff is inevitable.

Take the Package and Run!

Come on, get real. No nonsense on this site. Just real world experience.

"Old ways of doing business that is killing the company"? "Lack of innovation and lots of tenured associates resisting change"?

Completely absurd. Experienced, tenured associates are what made the company great. They have (had) the knowledge and know (knew) how to use it and learn and adapt to new systems. Being an ADP associate required stamina, resilience, constant knowledge acquisition, and always learning how to best use and incorporate the new systems and upgrades. If you were an ADP associate, you had to be an innovator and thrive on constant change, otherwise you would have to find other employment.

ADP associates were very well paid. That is what kept me around for many years. The new low paid associates that have been recently hired (in the never ending hire-quit-fire revolving door now present at the ADP supercenters) have no real incentive to work hard or to even stay. Why should they try to do very complex work for so little money? They can easily go somewhere else and get paid the same wages (or even more) for doing far less complicated work.

And the knowledge base is gone. What type of innovation and out of the box thinking is going to be done by low paid associates who cannot learn the complex jobs, and are not motivated to learn anything?

This is a disaster of the first order that the ADP top management team brought on itself by making the reckless decision on saving some labor costs by throwing away their knowledge base. They simply did not understand how complex many ADP jobs are. It was their responsibility to know this and they are paid to know this. They blew it, and how! What an embarrassment!

Lots of nonsense here. ADP is far from being perfect. But in my experience, it is the old ways of doing business what's killing the company. Lack of innovation and lots of tenured associates resisting to change.

Just another way get rid of the old people and make the people at the top richer with their stock options !!!!

I don't accept your argument about the client loss but that's fine. I don't feel like arguing about it any more.

The reason being is that whether ADP has lost a lot of clients or not is immaterial to my main argument. The fatal mistake was made by the ADP management team in cutting experienced personnel so far and so fast that there no longer exists any significant knowledge base to service clients. That is what may doom ADP.

Believe me, I looked at it. It's not accurate. Remember, he's not an insider so while directionally he was right about a lot of things, that was one of a few details he got very wrong, and he was only talking about the up-market segment that accounts for about 1% of the total client count.

All I'll say is to look at Page 23 of ADP Ascending: Detailed Supporting Materials (October 2017). No ADP spin there.

All I'll say is I was in a position to know, and ADPs client count overall today is higher than it was in 2010, as is their revenue and profits. That really is fact. If they'd lost half their clients, their revenue would be lower, not higher by a significant amount. Sure, they are losing clients, always have. They also replace them. The net in terms of total client counts is higher.

Personally I hope they do well. I'm a stockholder as well as friends with many ADPers. I don't hold out much hope for many of my friends, but have no doubt that ADP will survive, and eventually get it together, just with a whole new cast of characters. Their financial position is just too strong. What will likely happen is the current leadership won't be able to keep up with stockholder expectations, be replaced, the next group will understand the situation, reset stockholder expectations that ADP is going to have to invest in systems and people, and then put the ship right. At least I hope so.

To the one who is apologizing for the tone of their post:

Apology accepted. However, I stand by my statements. ADP has lost more than half its client base since 2010. Fact. When I was still with ADP in 2014 - 2016, we were appalled by the loss of clients over several years and were concerned for our jobs even then. When Bill Ackman was trying to edge into ADP a few months ago that was his chief point. And many of those clients were going to ADP s competitors.

And I never said that clients were leaving in droves, I said that WORKERS were leaving in droves, and they are (please reread my earliest post).

Also, please do not make false inferences about me that I would like ADP to fail. I still have friends and colleagues working there so for their sake I want ADP to succeed.

Also, note that in my posts I do not speak in absolutes. I do not claim anywhere that ADP is definitely, or unequivocally going down. I am not that infallible. But that is what I am seeing. I don't think that ADP will survive.

In your version of the facts where you state that ADP is "moving too fast and not executing well", I agree. But that alone is enough to doom the company because of the complexity of its systems as I had discussed earlier. Yet you will not admit that there is any chance of ADP floundering. Perhaps in turn, you would like to see ADP succeed no matter the evidence contrary to that. But I won't say that. I don't know you and what you think or don't think is none of my business.

I am very careful what I say in my posts and I do my research. I am a trained business analyst and researcher as well as a published author. I don't do "crazy talk".

Sorry about the tone of my previous post, but it's just not fair to readers to put false information out there. You did it again by saying ADP has lost half it's client base. Just flat not true. In the up-market segment, client counts are down but not by 50%. In MAS they are down slightly, and in SBS they are up. Net counts are up. Revenue continues to grow, margins continue to grow. Just facts that are available through public sources. Are clients happy? No. Are they leaving in droves? No. Is ADP still selling new units? Yes. It's a rough time, lots of people are being let go but not all tenured associates. I think they made a mistake in this approach by moving too fast and not executing well, but to think ADP is finished is just crazy talk. It sounds like you'd like to see that, but doesn't mean it will happen. Just trying to put some reality into this thread.

I have been with the company for years and have seen several changes since the execs decided to bring on lots of outside, young, new blood. It is all about the bottom line. Discrimination is becoming a big problem. Management at ADP does not have a problem telling associates they are too old to still be with the company. It's been visible for the past 3 or 4 years. Smart, experienced, caring people are being replaced with people right out of college with no experience and they work for very little and have bad work ethic. It is only a matter of time before these decisions really affect the reputation of the company and their profits. The clients are getting tired of working with people who don't have answers and get put on hold for 2 hours at a time! Notice the early retirement excludes executive level folks. It should have gone out to ALL 55 and over associates.

Thank you for your polite and thoughtful post regarding my post on taking the early retirement money lump sum.

This is far from "crazy crap", but a credible reality. The ADP management team made a fatal mistake in trying to replace just about all of its employees from 2016 through 2018. The team did not understand that the learning curves of many ADP jobs were very steep. They expected that the new cheap employees that were hired to replace the veteran, experienced, and knowledgeable ones would become productive after just a few weeks on the job. That certainly did not happen. Just read the many other posts here concerning that.

The firings and layoffs of the experienced ADP personnel were just too deep and the knowledge lost was too much. The new cheap employees have very few of the old timers to go to for help and are floundering, unable to properly do their jobs. Since the wages of the new employees are so low, they don't have much incentive to stick around but can leave and duplicate their wages at other companies that don't have such complex work. These new workers HAVE BEEN QUITTING IN DROVES. More are hired in and then they quit as well. The cycle then repeats.

ADP has had problems retaining clients for quite a few years now. Clients are getting even more angry and exasperated when these cheap employees are not able to assist them well. As a matter of fact, since 2010, ADP has LOST MORE THAN HALF OF ITS CLIENT BASE. Many of ADP s competitors have taken these clients.

So it is very likely that ADP is now a "dead man walking". The damage that was done to this company has just been too great.