Is it true that Optum is looking to lay-off or terminate all their telecommuter employees?
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If they do they are even more shortsighted than expected. It would just take one employee with a new virus at every site to be too scared to call out to really cripple the company!
Yes, Optum is moving in a direction that no longer includes Telecommuters. I was part of several hundred employees terminated for being a telecommuter. We were notified in July that the layoffs would take place in waves with the third and final wave having a termination date of 3/3/20. We were not given an option to go into an office. They can get around any policy by breaking the layoffs up into small 'waves'.
Our office has been sending people to work at home for years because there isn't enough space for everyone. id–tic to target those people.
Stop corporate travel and free Disney vacations if you want to cut costs.
Poor judgement on leadership.
True, but there are plenty of groups that have telecommuters and many live in the same area, Cypress, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Florida cities. So for some teams there could be benefits. But this company has no plan. Some groups they are telling to comeback in the office and others they are kicking out of offices to save on costs. I think there is a loophole on reporting layoffs of telecommuters which may be a possible reason they could be targeted. It allows them to layoff more while still staying under warn act violations and media exposure. These are strategic in nature.
I agree that it wouldn’t make sense to lay off the telecommuting teams or force them to go into the office. I work on a team where my leader and peers are located in different states. There would be no point for me to go to the local office because I wouldn’t see anyone from my team even there. If the company required me to go to the local office, It would be id–tic because there would truly be no value to it.
Roughly 45% of UHG employees are remote and don't work at a physical office location. Remote employees save the company a ton of money vs in office employees. I'm surprised this would be a criteria for cutting jobs but stranger things have happened.
No, there are way too many telecommuters. They may target them as far as layoffs or put in a requirement over time that they need to come in to the nearest office. I have heard they started doing that for various teams.
All telecommuters? In all segments? Not a chance.
Why do I say that? Because that large number of folks would cross the threshold in which UHG/Optum would have to supply WARN Act notices to the employees ahead of time. They don’t want that kind of negative press or, frankly, the loss of surprise against the employees.
They will likely thin out some WAH folks from various segments but not a blanket “all telecommuters”. Don’t do that to yourself by worrying just because you are a telecommuter. Their mantra seems to be to go after seniority and pay scale. I fall into that category. I already have my “Goodbye fellow co- workers” email typed up and ready to go as a draft in Outlook in case it’s
my turn to go.
Yes, they’ve done it before in certain segments