Thread regarding Cenovus Energy layoffs

Well I guess if I ran the company I would make sure she/her did not get laid off during all the cuts right? I mean these are vital roles to keep an oil and gas company afloat in lean times. This could not get more sad if they tried. Let’s lay off engineers, geologists, safety advisors but what ever you do let’s keep an entire team devoted to diversity and inclusion. You can tell someone is completely useless by their position title pretty quickly. Wonder how many diversity staff Tourmaline has on staff? Hmmm 0 maybe.
Me/sick of it/get a life/why are we here

"Any company who hires a Analyst of Inclusion and Diversity Strategy deserves to go under."

Yes, and you should understand the significance of this. It's just not anybody, it's a princess of the king.

Any company who hires a Analyst of Inclusion and Diversity Strategy deserves to go under. Let’s hire some brand new politically correct position and I’m sure everything will just work out fine. Don’t get to the root cause of the problems because that might be hard. Everyone can just have diversity moments at the start of each meeting and feel included and loved. Aside from the non stop layoffs and ignorant Husky managers and VPs that belittle and squash their Cenovus Staff. But yeah, what we need is some new PC nut bar to tell us how to feel and think.
This company is so screwed it’s hard to even comprehend.

Alex,
Have you just given up on having any common sense? Bow before your PC gods.

Culture will be fine? You can’t be that dumb to think you can put people through so many rounds of layoffs and anyone would care about your culture at Cenovus. Saying that I guess if you’re management or HR at Cenovus you probably are about as smart as a sack of hammers.

Culture will be improving and will be fine, we have a new Analyst of Inclusion and Diversity Strategy. I'm happy she is so well connected, now things will move in the right direction.

Consider why an energy company (ECA/CVE) would ever build it's own building. Think of the energy companies in Calgary that have put up a building vs leased existing space, and how those companies are doing today.

ESSO - Esso Plaza, hmmm not Esso plaza any more
Shell Computing center - what a disaster that was
Husky - first the tower then then office space
PetroCan - disaster of a crown corporation
Encana - The Bow, what a disaster
Cenovus - Brookfield place because the Bow wasn't good enough and needed a taller building than the Bow.

Suncor - nope, didn't build one and doinfg ok
CNRL - Nope, didn't build one either

Any company that puts up a building has lost sight of it's core business, the building is about feeding those big fat exec egos, and there are lots of them at CVE.

Cenovus is ultimately doomed to failure because the culture will never change with the current leadership. Entire leadership (that means everybody, including the ball lickers) need to be replace and we all know that will never happen.

I'm gonna hang on as long as I can and ride this pony right into the dust.

I do not normally post on this site, been a while, but it seems to me that Cenovus doesn’t understand how to acquire companies. They failed at the Conoco deal and again with the Husky deal. In both cases management egos ran the deals not economics. It is early on for sure but I do believe Cenovus will be studied as a business case in schools as an example of a bad management team.

A management team that needs to do 9 or so distinct rounds of layoffs and have such a massive real estate /lease on space downtown has failed. They could never control or plan for headcount and anyone and everyone could hire away as they saw fit over the good years, thus when the downturn hit Cenovus was a bloated company. That was not the employees fault, it was management errors. No one at the top even thought the oil and gas industry was cyclical? How many rounds of layoffs did Suncor and CNRL have (closest competitors). A few at Suncor for sure but no where near Cenovus, and CNRL either zero or maybe the odd people here and there.

Then look at the leased space Cenovus now “owns” vs the competition like CNRL and Suncor. They have been in the same space for decades. Not Cenovus, management egos dictated they must have the biggest shiniest building, the Bow. Then they needed an even bigger better shinier building which is the Brookfield building. Just like headcount they kept expanding but unlike headcount they can’t get out of the leases. This is why they split the G&A into rent and non-rent figures. On top of this they now own/lease the Husky building which is also redundant.

Now take a look at the number of VPs and SVPs versus Suncor or CNRL. Anyone want a bet on who might have the greater number of executives and layers of management? I have an idea.

My point? Bad management with bad decisions make for bad employment. Blaming employees for having a bad attitude after all they have experienced is pretty pointless when it was management decisions that put the company where it is today. The Cenovus board has long been useless at holding management to account for these bad decisions.

There’s no culture on the Cenovus side as after 9 rounds of layoffs only the truly id–tic would ever care about this company and it’s culture. Saying that at least in some cases we were consulted on decisions and our opinions taken into account. Sometimes.

At Husky it is a top down management knows best attitude and if you aren’t management you can just shut up and hide somewhere.

So yes I would say there is a clash. Mistake number one was bringing Husky management over to Cenovus. We did not need more management levels. The Husky employees, for sure bring them over, but not their management. They seem to thrive on beating people down.

History sure rhymes....