I got an email today, one of 288 people, from HR. “You’ve been moved to a new group.” My boss didn’t know this was coming, and neither did her boss, the VP. The new boss didn’t know.
At first they said things would be paused while they tried to get me back, but apparently the company has decided the the analytics folks all need to work as a group, rather than work for the people they support. I’m seriously displeased. I don’t take change well, even change I initiate, and to suddenly have my working relationships upended makes me want to quit. I’m a couple years from my planned retirement, and I’m in the “take this job and shove it” mood right now. If I can get healthcare reasonably, I can afford to walk.
I have a physical next week. When I have confirmation that I’m healthy, then I can start looking into options.
I say stick it out for the heatlh care and go in with I don’t give a damn about my performance reviews anymore. With just a couple of years to go I would not give up heatlh care. If someone offers you a better job take it without giving notice. They done showed they don’t care.
Si Amigo - I’m 61 with a very strong family history of cancer. I won’t go without healthcare, but have to look at the exchanges, etc.
Kent Clark - I hate surprises. Even good surprises. I don’t particularly like new people. I won’t quit in a huff - I’m too level-headed for that. But it makes early retirement much more likely. I hate being treated like cattle.
The exchanges suck compared to most employer provided plans. You pay about $1800 a month through the exchange for a similar employer plan in my research.
There is a good possibility this was exactly, or part of, the intention. I had this happen to me before and a lot of people chose to leave rather than move to work they didn’t want to do, including me. Was there a possibility of layoffs coming? Cause layoffs and severance are expensive. Employees leaving on their own makes downsizing easier.
“Change management” isn’t really my area of expertise, but in all my years of experience in corporate management, I kind of feel like there is never an assumption of “some employees won’t like this change and will leave on their own”.
I do think it’s kind of strange that such a large reorg would have been performed without any involvement from the OP’s manager or the VP of the group or any communications that it was in the works.
Also, why lump all the analytics people together? Is the company trying to create some sort of “center of excellence”? Typically analytics people don’t exist in a vacuum and ultimately support some part of the business.
I agree with this. Try to stick it out for a bit. In the meantime, assess your financial health to see if you can afford to retire if you find the change too upsetting, and you can afford to quit, do so.
I find this new team cross/functional thing has not worked well at a few of my contracting clients. For others, it really is an upgrade because you suddenly have people who can make suggestions when you are stuck, even if they aren’t strong in your specific area of analytics, but because they’d seen it work for others. It’s a decent way to exchange ideas.
While I have heard of companies doing this, I have no firsthand experience (remember, I’m a contractor). It does make sense for the company’s bottom line, but then, this would likely hold true for companies that really don’t care about public opinion in their communities.
That’s exactly what they’re doing. They started the CoE model a year ago with our SAP conversion (which nearly killed me, and I believe did kill one of my close friends, who dropped dead of a heart attack during a meeting the day after cut over). Not the analytics team, but others. Our division had long been a separate entity, but when we hit $4b/yr corporate started taking notice. So now the large multi-national corporation is trying hard to absorb our smaller group into them. However, we were a small group for a reason, and they aren’t recognizing this. They’ve tried to do this before and nearly killed our group.
It strongly depends on your household income. If you don’t make much the exchange plans can be incredibly cheap. But the price goes way up if you make more than around $60000. I’ve been on the exchange (Covered California) for the last few years, so I’m familiar.
Essentially, whatever your Adjusted Gross Income listed on your income tax form, that’s your income for the purpose of determining your health care premiums. There are some minor differences, but that’s the basic idea. So if you have taxable income of whatever sort, it counts.
Savings from income you already paid income tax on, does not count as income. Distributions from your 401k plan does count as income that you must pay tax on, as you have never paid tax on it yet. Social security payments also count as income you must pay tax on.
StGermaine, good luck. Big ass corporates, of which it sounds like you are under the umbrella of, have all the HR analytics. If they consolidate, how many people of what personas typically resign. Resignation is always the “least cost and effort” result for HR. Remember, HR is there to protect the hive from being sued, and could care less about how your shoes will get filled nor the impact of losing your experience.
Or say it a different way. Those responsible for the restructuring have their metrics or marching orders to meet that are silo’d from those who need to deal with the fallout if you quit. Your management chain may not want this change, but unless they have a headcount and the juice, there is nothing they can do. If you need to be backfilled, well that’s a HR hiring managers job. Your role not delivering, well that’s the business units job to figure out how to cover.
My two cents, being 61 with kids, I would play it out. Assume best intentions that this is a corporate thing but all the individuals just want to get on with life. Play it out with all your professional skills. At the same time, I wouldn’t go above and beyond. If this is some kind of 3 dimenisional chess to avoid layoffs, working 80 hour weeks won’t take you out of the layoff pool either. Be professional, make a credible effort for 90 days or whatever as if this was a new position you wanted, and see how it shakes out.
Chine_Guy - I’m 61, with no dependents except for dogs and horses. And yes, the “welcome to your new team” email was from an HRBP (I had to look that up - HR Business Partner) whose signature included her JD. A freaking lawyer. Ours is a Fortune 25 company, 50K employees.
So far I haven’t heard from the new boss, and I’ll ride it out for a while - I’m sure it’ll take at least 6 mo to a year for things to shake out. Since the new boss was unaware of the transition, she can hardly have a plan in place. Who knows? I may like the transition. Since I’m WFH, I’m not expected to be in anyone’s pocket. As long as she isn’t a micro-manager, I can probably deal.
Something similar happened to me. The main electric company bought out my gas company. We saw it coming, but we were shoved without discussion to the electric company, where we had a new boss and a new crew. Luckily, I knew at least one of the team members, but it didn’t help much. When they offered me full retirement, I saw the writing on the wall and took it. After that, my friend told me they dissolved the department and outsourced the whole thing to Poland. Then they sold their gas division to another gas company and filed chapter 11. So it can get very complicated.
My company has program management which gets and handles customers. And functional management which hires and handles employees. There’s a long ebb and flow of power and restructuring between the two management groups. It was annoying at first, but I’ve gotten to know people across the company and have a lot of unofficial contacts now. That helps me get stuff done and gives me some control over my career path.