Stunning lack of facts on this site. In any acquisition shareholders demand synergies. Fiserv synergies announced on day one included $900M in cost which at the time amounted to less than 10% of overall cost. If half of those savings come from duplication of departments and people that would amount to about 5,000 people. In a company as large as Fiserv it easily hires that many employees each year and easily employs that many contractors. As for Jeff and Frank, they are both very accomplished leaders and Fiserv has and will benefit by having both of them until Jeff retires. Frank will give his all 24/7 for the benefit of building an even better company for our associates, clients and shareholders. Attacking your own company only benefits your competition (especially when most is not true).
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Without mentioning names, the west coast executive with suspiciously black hair needs to retire.
Interesting. At the time of this comment, there are NO reactions being shown for any of the posts within this thread nor any option to offer a reaction. WTH?
Looks like moderators purged some replies in this post. Be careful using specific names of people.
72 downvotes, well done!
@6rtw - thank you for asking. He’s obviously admired as much as Frank is but still I have no real idea who they’re talking about. There were 44k employees in many business units. I think I figured it out - head of Electronic Pmts?
Obviously the original poster (poser) has been drinking too much kool-aid. What I find fascinating is that Uber cuts loose 3,500 people across the US and it’s making the news all over the place but Fiserv lays off 10% of its workforce and it doesn’t even hit the radar in Wisconsin much less anywhere else?
Just a comment with regards to the original post, This is a general employer/employee relationship observation and not aimed at any company in particular.
If employees are supposed to understand that it's just business when thousands are laid off to "realize expected synergies for stockholders", employers should not be surprised when the remaining employees adopt an "it's just business" attitude in regards to their dedication and enthusiasm.
I see all of the back and forth about whether the layoffs are valid. I’m thinking that HR and senior leadership are posting their idea of damage control. I guess those 30 minute calls on Fridays with Tom are getting a little too uncomfortable. Using an Anonymous process, questions are fed to Tom to address which has gotten very good at not answering completely. BUT we do know that Tom and his doctor girlfriend have an ocean front home with an awesome view of the beach (nice) but we still don’t have a concert answer on how many people they have laid off since the beginning of 2020. Staff that has been with Fiserv for any length of time would agree that Fiserv has always eliminated staff with little thought to the impact and not replacing that open position. After each waive, Fiserv staff scramble to find the next subject matter expert. The aftermath leaves staff convinced that that whole FISERV1/ Fiserv family motto is b—s—. Fiserv can’t possibly care for employees and clients. The mindless propaganda that’s force-fed to the staff about this company being one of the top 500 most admired companies is laughable.
Fiserv employee = 0
Stock price = Priority
All Frank will be worried about is how he will make his next 100 million. All he did when he ran First Data was to cut employee benefits, cut staff and line his own pockets. This will be the new Fiserv going forward. Someone told me when the merger went down that this was not Fiserv buying FD but the other way around. I now believe it. Glad I got let go after 21 years I am at a much better company now.
Drink the koolaid and get your nose and lips more brown. Wait till what happens 6 months from now. All Frankie is doing is prepping what was a decent company prepped for sale. Pathetic .
Using the word synergy tells me that this is some corporate stooge. Look, fine, "synergy" needs to happen, but usually the company doing the buying tends to keep their employees. "Fiserv acquires First Data....". Who bought who? With FB is charge, do you think that original Fiserv employees will survive? Hell no. And lets also force everyone to work from an office, because that way we limit the work pool options and since FD people already do, it wont affect them. I laughed when they said well Facebook and Google do it, I don't think any of Fiserv's campuses compare to those. FD would be completely closed down right now with a work from work policy in place. Letting FB take over is like letting a McDonalds manager take over Nasa. He doesn't know what he is doing in this arena.
People Make Up the Difference
So what you're saying is Frank isn't letting all the remote employees go and herding everyone into locations?!
Lol this site is for people with first hand insight to give us what they hear and see on an upper management level. Some teams are being told about the remote employee release and others like mine are in full denial about it, I wouldn't know or be prepared of not for sites like this.
Lot of managers at Fiserv are non technical and they have no idea in technology terms what the employees are saying they do a google search and decide who to give the work. The person giving technical ideas to non technical is like always trying to explain them and that leads to other problems as the manager goes and ask another person in team same question and gets multiple answers due to lack of knowledge of other team members. Finally the person giving proper answers is let go as the manager does not like them.
If they layoff this manager they will save the money instead of firing working people.
Crazy part is this site is for rumors not facts! If you want facts stick to the press releases on Fiserv.com. Most of what you read here is indeed facts. We have VP’s that are also fed up and post here anonymously. They share what they’ve been told. Last week we had a lay-off of 4000+ people. It was on this site in advance! Take your Pom pons and cheerlead for Frank on your own time. The rest of us will update our resumes and hopefully go to companies where the relationship of Employer to Employee is balanced. You get back what you give and all FB does is take away...
The OP here must live in a state where the green stuff has been legalized if he thinks that Tony Soprano is going to be anything as effective in creating an environment that is anything less than 'churn em and burn em' with the headcount.
Remember speculation comes from a lack of transparency and communication from senior management. A forum like this is the only means for people to have speculative communications on what may or may not be going on in the company with layoff’s, and possible other information. Morale of the story be more transparent, and have the right people in VP and SVP positions that can provide effective communications, clear goals and trust their teams to do their jobs. The OFD person that we have overseeing the group is an extremely non-technical person overseeing a highly technical team and they do not know what the heck they are doing but micromanages the team like she does (i.e. bypass’s management chain and ask’s people to do specific work). I spend more time updating the team leadership and data entry on what was done, than actually doing meaningful work.
In regards to a 10% reduction in staff would just mean that less gets done, because I doubt people are willing to put in the extra effort with such a little payout and low morale. A great leader does the right thing for associates, and with that associate morale goes up. At this point in time with morale so low, I doubt you will get more than 8hrs of work from anyone. If you do, then they are a s—er. Advice, stop focusing on your bottom line, stop the micromanagement c-ap and start trusting the people you hired to do the job they were given, regardless of where they are. Start hiring the best talent from all around the US and listen to them when they tell you there might be a problem. Keep your star talent, by allowing managers to give bigger raises and/or bonus’s.
Senior leadership made a huge dog and pony show about taking a baseline pay-cut, which is a minor part of their annual income; while, the hard-working associates lost far more in comparison with benefits. It’s not like each associate can sell a few thousand shares of Fiserv stock to cover the loss. Your decisions as leaders have decimated the culture, and I doubt you will be able to hire and keep top tier talent for very long.
The endless cycle of hiring spree followed by layoff lottery (wherein it isn't really a process of ditching deadwood, but mostly about settling scores, protecting the good ol' boys, and ditching the newbies who haven't quite learned how to play the right games). I've seen it go on for years here.
Next up, let's talk about how we went from industry standard time accounting to outright spyware on the laptops. Let's talk about how they preach long and loud about work-life balance but if you work-from-home, you're practically marked as layoff bait.
Oh the uppers cut their salaries? Bet they didn't cut their bonuses, stocks options, their quiet golden parachutes which are slowly vesting in the background... it's easy for a multi-millionaire to give up his walking-around money for show, kiddo.
Oh, the essential workers got a salary bump? Sure, a small group of people did - and I bet FISV will hire like mad to bolster that group of employees just so that they can quietly target and layoff the ones who got the bump two years from now. I know this because I'VE SEEN THEM DO IT BEFORE.
I lost a lot of good coworkers, and was forced to tell three of my reports that they were laid off - just so that Frank and Jeff could tongue-polish each others' genitalia at the earnings call.
I'm done here. I'm f—ing done here.
The only thing now that keeps me from telling the entire management chain (and groveling lickspittles like you) to go f— themselves is the COVID crisis. Even then, I've gotten a lot of positive responses from recruiters around here, and oddly enough, WFH is actually perfectly okay with them, COVID or no COVID.)
I should have left way back when they sang that "One Fiserv" gospel while forming up layoff lists at the same damned time.
Would you prefer a 10% pay cut for 6 months or a 10% staff reduction permanently, with the remainder to pick up the slack?
Lay off hundreds then three months later pay millions to get their name on a sporting venue.
Insult the city their HQ is in.
Layoffs now coming more often.
Gut the talent pool. Let the ones that built many of their systems go.
Folks from India taking American jobs.
Internal system support is a mess.
Under 50% customer referral from customers.
Employee moral is at its lowest.
Lack of clear effective leadership at office levels
If you are going to compare, you must include all elements. How about Fiserv's removal of the 401k match and employee stock discount? You focused on an increase given to a small subset of lower paid essential workers which Fiserv needs to show up for work. Leadership gave up a percentage of salary which doesn't really impact their overall benefit packages. That was only done to try to hedge against the expected drop in morale. Nice try, spinster.
Proof point to the above post Global Payments forced all employees to take a 10% pay cut, Fiserv gave all essential employees a 25% INCREASE. Fiserv leadership voluntarily gave up a percentage of their salary, which company do you prefer???