Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

@3par - I agree with you 100%. Also, as the interest rates for the lump sum go up, there’s going to be greater reliance on using NSI rankings to force RE’s to retire. The voluntary retirement offers they used last year won’t be so attractive.

@3fiu - EM is by no means the only oil company to get rid of 50+, expensive employees by claiming “performance issues”. It’s just that only EM does it systematically, on an industrial scale.

Let’s put it this way. If your supervisor signals to you they want to help you you may be able the pip. It will be a lot of work as others have said. I know of at least 4 people who passed last year because supervisors wanted to help. At least two had been pressured to push their individuals out. However September rolled along and all the interest in those on the PIP went away. All 4 were laid off in the end.

@3fiu+1c05EldH
So you’re a supervisor claiming that REs are “untouchable”. Well, tell that to my RE friends who got put in NSI last year and forced to retire after taking the PIL. Maybe you should read the online FAQ, it’s spelled there very clearly, the only thing different about REs is that if they fail the PIP or take the PIL they can retire. The ones who are untouchable are the NRE, who can’t be fired if they fail the PIP, but will be promptly forced to retire when they reach 55, with a paltry 75% of the pension, of course - what kind of supervisor doesn’t know that?
You claim that the 8% applies to EACH assessment group. That would be great news, because we would love to see a bunch of managers from the higher groups PIPed off… but it didn’t happen last year and it’s not going to happen, ever.
If this whole weird, oversized and endless series of PIPoffs is not about personnel reduction, specifically targeting those who can’t be just laid off, then please pray tell what is it about ? The company just decided to reinvigorate and fortify its employees by a joyful, morale-lifting performance improvement exercise exactly in the worst year of its history ? And then decided to lay off all those “invigorated” last year by surviving the PIP ? Do you have the guts to affirm that in front of everybody here ?
You think that getting rid of highly experienced employees doesn’t make sense? Well, you’re right for once, but then how do you implement a strategy of reducing employee costs when the most expensive employees are the experienced ones? Just look around you and you will see the absurdly low average experience in most groups. How comes that of the very few technical people who had 20+ ye almost all have been laid off last year ? Why virtually all the lower management REs retired last year, even some who clearly didn’t want to do so? You cannot possibly be a supervisor, be honest and make the claims in your post.

@ 1ued+1c05EldH-

That doesn't even make sense. There's no way they're putting more young people in NSI in some weird conspiracy to cover up oversized MLRPs of RE/NRE for 3 obvious reasons: (FYI I'm a supervisor)

1: Young people are in a different CL group and they're not ranked against RE/NRE unless you were pathetically low performing your whole career. And the 8% applies to every assessment group.

2: RE's/NRE's are untouchable. They go on a DPC (performance counseling) if they're NSI where they can't be fired regardless.

3: Young people were removed in larger numbers because we had to put 8% of MACs in NSI as well as 8% of CL 20-25, plus they were targeted in higher numbers in the redundancy program due to fewer years of service.

Besides, from a strategic point of view, I'd the company direction is to send lower-competency work to India and have a few remaining high-competency experts in engineering /at the sites, it wouldn't make sense to mass release the senior technical folks and leave new hires working. Blind leading the blind.

I think they have been told to make PIP passable this year. There's hardly anybody left to do the work since so many bailed out of this sinking behemoth this year.

I gave my supervisor the n-word pass and everything went smoothly after that.
That's all he ever wanted

A person can successfully complete a PIP, but do no think anything will be the same afterwards.There is a reason the company let you pass the PIP and more than likely it was to protect the company.

Get out!

After last years round of NSI and the huge amount of attrition, the PIP will be a process that most should be able to pass. These are folks who were good or very good last year, but with downward pressure, ended up NSI this year. Take the PIP - odds are in your favor to pass.

If you’re reasonably young and take the PIP, there should be some chances to pass, because young people are now put in NSI mainly to hide that the “weird”, oversized, repeated MLRPs that really exist to target REs and the NREs as they get past 55 (hence the 5-7 years that the process is supposed to last).
If you’re an RE put in NSI, it would be the d-mbest thing to take the PIP. They will not waste “valuable” NSI slots only to do “catch and release” - you’re down and out. Last year many of the REs put in NSI, some respected company experts in their field, were simply depressed to see themselves humiliated in this way. They just couldn’t believe that the company would use such dirty, cheap tricks.
Now we all know what’s going on; it’s our management who is losing their dignity, not the people put in NSI.

I was very surprisingly based on KO and manager feedback, NSI’d last year as an experienced hire. I took the PIP because I wanted to prove that I was unfairly NSI’d and I passed it so I know first-hand the PIP can be accomplished.

Surviving a PIP is an incredibly stressful and demeaning process though. Contant stress and worry. Countless hours of doing mostly worthless BS to show your worth. My mental and physical health suffered significantly during that time. It even pushed me into having a panic attack because I miscoded something in my timesheet by one number because you are scrutinized that hard.

In the end, I was laid off even after passing the PIP but I expected as much. Based on the formula and not many years of reference with the company I saw it coming. During the PIP experience it did allow me to step back a realize what I really wanted in my life and career and helped me see EM and how they treat their people wasn't it. I had already been planning my exit surfing and after serving the PIp anyway. I will say it left me with a sense if pride that I proved that the NSI ranking was wrong In the first place.

It depends on your own personal situation and how surprised and offended you are about being placed in the NSI group.

When I was NSI’d in July 2020, my first reaction was to tell my supervisor that I would take the PIP. However, the more I thought about it, the more I became certain that I’d be on a hiding to nothing. By my own reckoning - listed accomplishments AND the great feedback from KO’s - I had a great 2019. In fact, even better than my previous 3 years … yet I was placed in NSI. So there was no reason for it, other than I had been chosen (by my supervisor ? By his supervisor ?) to be pushed out of the company.

I knew there was no way that they would let me succeed in the PIP - where I would need to convince 3 levels of assessor (including HR and Law) that I would achieve at least a “Good” ranking over the next 3 cycles. In fact, a week before I had to finalize my choice (PIP or PIL), my supervisor told me that he still had no idea what my PIP would look like and I would only find out AFTER I selected it and only after it had been reviewed by HR and Law).

So it was an easy choice or me in the end: work my nuts off for the next 3 months on PIP and then lose my job, or take PIL and get the 3 months salary for doing nothing.

Mind you, as soon as I submitted the form confirming I was taking PIL, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. My LAN account was deactivated the next day and I was told to report to the site to clear out my office and return all company equipment. They were in such a rush to do this, my supervisor hadn’t even got around to informing Security or generating any of the other forms associated with someone leaving the company. 30 years with the company and all I got was “don’t let the door but you in the a$$ on the way out !”

Right. But 90% who got the NSI ranking took the PIL. The 10% who took the PIP were gluttons for punishment, or just d-mb as sh-t.

90% of the people that took the PIP last year passed. I have no idea what that means for this year’s pass/fail rate, but clearly both are viable options.

This question has been answered here at least a dozen times. Are you obtuse? Sounds like you deserved the axe...