Funny how Maurice Mattholie has been sending out these emails for years, and is never the one to get his P45 eh?
Third time unlucky? HPE in redundancy talks with UK services staff
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has told UK and Ireland Enterprise Services (ES) staff they face the axe once again – in a third round of redundancies in less than a year. The company, which is offloading the division to CSC in the next financial year, is asking for volunteers this time unlike the previous compulsory job cuts. In …
COMMENTS
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Friday 22nd July 2016 17:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: How about a bit of Management Management
Prior to using Workforce Management (WFM), HP used the term Workforce Reduction (WFR) for a number of years. I speculated that they changed because Workforce Management sounds so much more positive than Workforce Reduction, doesn't it?
If it wasn't so serious this stuff would be quite amusing. Once again, feel for the people involved.
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Friday 22nd July 2016 20:45 GMT buckets10
Re: How about a bit of Management Management
It is happening, although usually fairly quietly. Lots of "middle" managers have been leaving and then all the staff they had are left to report up to the next level. One manager I know of has almost 100 people reporting to him thanks to this! I hear he's been trying to delegate responsibilities out to technical team leaders but with no sign of a payrise for taking it on, no one wants to know.
My last two managers were both made redundant over the last year or so and each time my team were just moved under another person alongside all their existing staff.
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Friday 22nd July 2016 17:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
"It is not clear how many people HPE will chop in Q4 but the more people that volunteer to leave with a cheque the fewer compulsory redundancies will made. Obviously."
No. They'll take the volunteers and then CR as many people as they originally intended. The VR applicants are just gravy.
If they're offering halfway decent VR terms, get out now before they inevitably follow IBMs lead in offering statutory minimum payouts/'offering a market competitive package'.
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Friday 22nd July 2016 23:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well that is one of the reason why this surprise VR (they normally get announced 2nd or 3rd Friday of the quarter not 2 weeks to go of the previous quarter) has generated so much interest, it was the only topic of conversation for a day. Other reasons include
1 - Who knows what redundancy package CSC will offer in April 17 when those $billion synergy savings kick in
2 - Even managers have been repeating the rumour that HPE could change their VR terms in Q1 2017 (if pushed they will just say they don't know what the VR terms in Q1 will be or what they will be with CSC, in Q2 17, see 1, and that staff must have misunderstood them! Funny that was their explanation why the employee Voice of the Workforce questionnaire was so low, staff didn't understand the questions!!!)
3 - The compulsory redundancy debacle in Q2 and Q3 has made even the most ostrich employee realise that HPE has no concern about them or their customers, cost is the only concern and the whole thing is just a spreadsheet in California.
FYI The ES terms are more than halfway decent, not as decent as the real HPE terms but still quite nice.
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Sunday 24th July 2016 08:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Assuming UK law still applies...
"possible that HPE will do what IBM did and change redundancy terms to Statutory minimums."
Not always legally permissible, e.g. afaik they can't change redundancy Ts+Cs in the middle of an ongoing redundancy programme.
Consult union rep (internal or external) for further info.
You do have a union rep?
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Saturday 23rd July 2016 08:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm so glad...
... took voluntary redundancy from HP a while back. When I left morale was at an absolute rock-bottom. Good, honest, talented, skilled, hard-working people had just about given up and effectively switched off - it was a crying shame what HP had become. I cannot imagine what it must be like now. My advice is to grab voluntary redundancy if it is offered and run for the hills. Wherever you end up cannot be as bad as suffering the dead-hand of HPE.
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Tuesday 26th July 2016 11:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'm so glad...
I finish tomorrow after 15 years at EDS/HPE and as I have taken VR will walk away with a smile on my face. I just feel sorry for those affected by the CR's and have mortgages and families to support. The thing that I find most insulting is the companies complete indifference to decades of experience and knowledge that individuals have built up and think that this can be assimilated into a Grad or new recruit with a couple of weeks Knowledge Transfer. I am glad I am out of it.
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Sunday 24th July 2016 20:18 GMT Mark 85
"more nimble"?
Really? What this usually means is that "we're going to have fewer and fewer employees doing the same amount of work that many more used to do.". In other words... "row faster you scurvy dogs".
When companies start spouting this and the ever popular "we're adjusting ourselves to industry standards" it's usually time to bail out and look for something else.
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Sunday 24th July 2016 20:39 GMT CheesyTheClown
What's left of HP?
HP - Sells laptops that doesn't fill needs. Kind of a Packard Bell. Sells printers which don't really work. Their consumer line has endless problems burning ink. Their large format printers (until the Latex series) score amazingly low on cost and quality.
HP (then Agilent, now something new) sells the stuff which made HP awesome to begin with.
HPE sells class servers like Non-stop and HPUX, Superdomes, etc... They sell substandard blade servers which don't function for shit in the data center (Java 6 required to manage the blades). They sell two dozen different and most incompatible network equipment lines. They sell storage that is so hellbent on fiber channel that they perform at about 1/10th the speed of a similar NAS solution from respectable companies. They sell management software suites that universally increase CapEx and OpEx by so much that ROI is not achievable.
CSC - Sells services that are provided by an organization that is so silo driven that the network guys can't even spell hard drive.
Isn't it time HP dumps someone who has a nice wardrobe in favor of someone who has some actual knowledge?