Outsider wondering about State Farm. Early March we got announcements that ~900 employees were being let go. Then on Friday March 30th we were notified people were walked out.
Did they notify those affected in early March and allow them to work through the month until the 30th? Or were those affected last Friday Mar 30th another group of affected employees?
Did State Farm provide severance packages for those affected?
@SwSlQ8P-1cdr Tech without leadership is worthless
This is correct. And it’s the root of State Farm’s troubles. There was no Leadership. We are behind. We aren’t even in the race. Honestly I think we have already lost the race due to our “Technology Leaders”. Why are a few of them still at the top of the food chain in Systems? It’s hardly just that you threw out $2Billion and are still employed and worse yet have been promoted. It’s really hard to take this seriously when you have valuable contributors being severed and those that signe checks like ink was going out of style remain.
Five years in. Me. 🙋🏼♂️
“Just offer severence to all employees and be done with it. Most r so ready to go.”
Just offer severence to all employees and be done with it. Most r so ready to go.
Be aware. SF does not care for their employees. It will be at their demise.
@SwSlQ8P-1cdr - Dude, I feel your pain. I can't begin to address everything you have so thoughtfully put down, but I can tell you from a Proximity perspective the decision process is a random, scary mess. For us, someone at corporate created territories and staffing decisions were made based on where you lived. Job performance was not a consideration. Let that sink in. All the running around people have done, or not done over the past years didn't mean squat. I personally know level 3 employees that are out of a job come 7/31. At the same time, I know level 1 employees that should have been fired years ago that are fine.
I have seen IT people in other posts state that the BA's will be the ones to go. My recommendation to anyone is not to believe anything until you hear it on an official conference call. I can tell you that a lot of the people I know that are either out of a job, or still competing for one are over 45, most over 50. The company gets a twofer, cutting a body and cutting a high salary.
At this point I would recommend that you focus on yourself & family. There are threads that talk about preparing yourself for what may come - read these.
What is stressful and wrong is forcing people to beg for their own jobs in other areas or cities. It’s stressful not knowing wtf is going to happen to our families future but knowing you’re on the chopping block and possibly screwed out of severance if you don’t take a job not on your career path and the bottom of a pit of despair is not productive.
It’s stressful to be given 6 months to find a job within the company or outside of the company. If you hang around and don’t get selected you can get severance but that’s not completely true or is it? You don’t know but if you don’t stay and be stressed about it all - then you may lose out on severance.
You might get a job if some manager who is stressed and pressured hires you otherwise you hear the rumors that you may have to be demoted to an understaffed role and even then you have to take a test to be honored for this position.
This is how people who have worked and bled for a company for more than ten years - even with 3’s must feel.
What makes me the most angry are those in limbo - who were told to stay in limbo by being move around (for experience) and do all of these tricks and make sure to impress new bosses every 3 - 6 months to get that promotion and no matter how many certifications you’ve gotten or innovative ideas you’ve provided or how many saved managers a$$es you saved with your overtime and hard work (your management ready status was pushed back again), the excuses - you are new to your new boss and they need more time - after your 3 years of waiting becomes 5-6 years and your finally 6 years in and you’re in that 0-3 month ready status your promotion is suddenly paused due to vivifired.
Has anyone at State Farm done their research on Fawad? This is a shady lawyer/but not really lawyer who has a weak online presence (digital fingerprints) and not very credible work history. His pictures on alumni websites are very recent and there is no record he ever passed the bar in California but was an assistant in his grampa’s law-firm and moved from job to job in companies that lasted very short term and they have never mentioned him or if they did - it was for a week or through another employee and not the company itself. He graduated from a school that no longer exists on the east coast and was at the same school that NY terrorist bomber came from who took the same classes with him and came from the same area in Pakistan. His last job was Staples but walks around in an Ebay jacket which I know people who work there and have never even heard of him. He is now in charge of the largest layoffs and reductions in State Farm history. It s---s that a person like this is in charge of finding credibility in his employees when he looks like he faked his work history and maybe even graduations.
A person pushes for a promotion because a promotion is the only way you can get a raise greater than the yearly inflation rate but not by much. You’ve already sacrificed many years left on a fish hook and using up your prime years on a joke like State Farm but can’t do anything because you have a family to take care of and due to the 2% raises and 5-6% inflation rates you are making less than you did 10 years ago.
Now you have to be concerned about being qualified for a great job somewhere else because of structural unemployment - you might have changed careers to a management track from another department or learned everything there is to know about insurance and now what? Should you go to another insurance firm - which may be obsolete after autonomous cars take over and who will be self-Insured - but hey you believed in a company called State Farm. You’re fault! You’re 5 months from retirement and they saved money walking you out now. It’s just wrong.
They have done this transformation so wrong. They aren’t even applying business 101 - your employees will not be productive if they are stressed out - so technically there will be no growth during these ridiculous next months because of the ways they’re reducing their staff and leaving families hanging.
Giving someone time to find a job somewhere else is great but dangling hope to keep their job by begging and applying for internal jobs or even their own jobs makes no sense. You should know your employees.
They have performance reviews and years of experience. If they aren’t where they should be - that’s State Farm’s fault. They have to have at least 1 capable HR rep who can provide kpi’s and statistics on who they can transform, educate and grow but they are acting super dumb.
The company is not ready for tech advances that are coming and instead of stressing employees out you should be transforming them. Prepare them, get ready for AI - which is getting so good and you could use this technology for your online presence. Your apps, technology and platforms are all over the place and it cannot change over the next 2 years because your stressing your staff out! State Farm is letting rain fall down wherever it wants and this is a method and strategy to fail.
You’re not transforming- you are torturing fathers, mothers, caregivers and loyal workers who are forced to take risks that don’t make sense on this terribly unpaved irresponsible road upper management has laid down. Transformation should be exciting. Cutting employees should be straightforward and not a competitive game to be played in a company - pitting employees against each other - loyal generations of policy holders will see this as unstable.
State Farm people have sacrificed for a company who act like they don’t know them and they had taken risks to move to the middle of no where - and the only tech jobs are hours away.
State Farm is becoming the worst company I have ever seen. Who brought in new management to cut employees in the worst way as if they don’t know their policy holders or employees or just don’t care.
State Farm is not a good neighbor- they’re acting like a pushy new neighbor who is bossy rude and lets their dogs p--p everywhere and not clean up their own sh78 but wants to demand others do it and has no moral compass or empathy.
I get that you need effective employees - you could work with them, prepare them with assessments and plans to transform them. A treatment plan to move your company’s employees and future forward - giving employees positive and constructive ways to lead State Farm in the new technical age. If they can’t follow the plan - give them 60 days and lay them off. But know them.
The way State Farm is innovating is untrustworthy, not transparent and putting a bottom line (which has not been planned by management who can lead successfully) will only work in the short run - which makes State Farm products and policies appear in the decline phase of its business cycle. No more products or innovations to offer?
If you think you can get better tech staff in the hubs - you might be right but without a new vision or knowing the modifications of your old vision and products - what’s the point. Tech without leadership is worthless and you have people who you will lose that are diamonds in the ruff and who probably wouldn’t require that high salary you’re planning to pay babies without industrial experience if you cared to know them.
Hold on, Sally. I never said what was going on NOW was normal. But it was indeed normal for people outside of BLM to get laid off every now and then. I know because I've personally been through it more than once.
It just didn't tend to happen in BLM very often. That was my point.
That's not true. It's never been normal for State Farm to lay off massive people every where. They have been consolidating several times over the years. If you were unable to move or commute to a new location you were out. As we are coming to the end of the road...field offices were downsized to regional offices and now regional offices are being closed and they are no longer offering relocation packages and we feel like we have been shafted. We were well informed prior to this time that the future is in the Hubs. Yes, I will agree the people near the ivory tower have been less affected than the rest of us, but the writing has been on the wall for many years. You just weren't paying attention.
I'll also add, most offices that were closing were given a long time to prepare for it, now we are only given a few months! I guess you snooze, you lose!
I wish everone the best. Hard times for us all.
I was a State Farm employee. We were part of a group that helped agents sell life, health, bank and mutual funds. We were let go in August of 2016 and our last day was December 31s of 2016, if we were eligible to retire we could but we had to stay until the very last day. We could retire and still get severance. We were not escorted out but then we worked out of our homes. It felt horrible.
Seriously, THOUSANDS of people have been let go within the last few years. Per typical State Farm culture, Bloomington remained mostly unaware. I'm not blaming the BLM workers, it's just that I've been down this road before and I know that eliminating external facilities and laying off people in other geographical locations has ALWAYS been part of the corporate DNA.
But layoffs in BLM? That's like killing the sacred calf. Still, I'm sympathetic. It's got to be hard to have the blinders ripped off like that.
Oh wow. Whole separate group of people.
I hope the 900 people who were recently notified get a few months severance to find another job.
Jeez.
The 508 walked out were the ones notified in early March?
When you say they had 6 months to prepare...were the majority of the 508 notified months ago? And the remaining were notified in early March?
Basically, what kinds of heads up did the people who got laid off get?
Thank you!
The people who were shown the door on March 31st were notified of their QTD (qualified termination date) 6 months ago. This group included Systems Remote workers and others.
It was not part of the 890-to-1200 people who will lose their jobs as part of the more recent announcement in Bloomington.
For those who have only recently started paying attention, this snowball has been rolling downhill for a long, long time. A couple of years now at least.
No body was “walked out” if you mean fired spontaneously. The 508 that separated from the company on March 30 were people who chose to retire or opted to take severance. Granted some of them may have preferred to separate on a different timeline. They made informed decisions and had about 6 months to prepare.