What determined which departments were offered voluntary severance versus only involuntary? There's a significant difference between the two, up to a half years salary. In my department, it was only involuntary and for my location we couldn't opt out, even though there were more impacted employees than available jobs. I would've opted out if I could've and that is probably why we couldn't. This has gone on for far too long and one can only think it's intentional. The longer we're under this type of stress, the more that will leave.
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To the last poster: Given that they eliminated 100% of remote workers in the 3 affected areas, I fail to understand how offering voluntary would have been more effective.
Voluntary is used if they if they DON'T want to eliminate EVERYONE.. They want to keep a certain percentage, and for whatever reason they feel it's easier to ENTICE a certain percentage to leave with a HIGHER, VOLUNTARY severance than it would be to have some more precise culling mechanism.
If you want to eliminate 100% of an effected group, you don't have to split the camp into voluntary and involuntary. You just sh---can everyone.
Voluntary is for when you want to entice some people to leave so it's easier to sort through the rest. What State Farm has found, however, is that when they offer voluntary in those situations, people accept the offer who they don't want to accept it, and they are left trying to re-fill those positions.
Again, if the goal is to eliminate EVERYONE, this is not a concern.
I'm confused by this last comment....if they really wanted to get rid of the most remote workers they SHOULD have offered Voluntary....it's more money, more attractive & more people would have opted out. I heard that more Proximity folks opted out than they expected. It would have been worse if they had offered Voluntary.
I think what it boils down to is what percentage of the effected group they'd like to retain, and whether it's easier if large numbers of them volunteer to leave vs. going through a more aggressive culling process.
Remote workers, for example, were severed in one clean cut. The company did not want to retain any of us, so voluntary severance was not offered.
Systems IT analysts have not been offered voluntary, and they haven't said if involuntary will even be offered.
I know claims secretaries were only offered involuntary. Systems, L&D and Stategic Resources were offered voluntary. It appears to be determinded by the department restructuring and perhaps job class. We’ll never know, just like we’ll never know our competency ratings.
All I know is in claims it was section manager, consultants, claim managers and up! Not offered to the lower level employee's. Yes, Mgmnt takes care of themselves.