So people are getting let go in corporate, but just not at an noticeable rate that would make any news. If it did, it would be very bad PR to buy Aetna and cut people at the same time. As a member of HR, some of it is for cause, in other cases it's meeting the budget, so it's not out of the ordinary. It is happening at a pace that is higher than normal outside of announced layoffs. Retail will notice cut in hours and not a noticeable cut in headcount. 2019 and early 2020 will see consolidation efforts with Aetna and CVS taking place and there will be a mass slashing and done at once because no company wants to prolong the focus on them when this takes place. Just wait. It's not going to be a 'ha' I told you so. It's more of a, this is sad, and sometimes just a part of business. The focus of a public company is first to the share holders and this doesn't mean employees and customers don't matter, they do, just be aware management needs to focus on profitability and growth and expense cutting is a part of the process. Let's come back a year later and hope the direction has changed and people say, that person was crazy saying the things in this post, I actually would prefer that.
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Our department head just resigned. This person will stay on, but is leaving next month. I think he/she sees the writing on the wall.
The old saying , you smooth talking Devil! Be smart, everything is not ok! Please get another job somewhere else. Period
Teams asking about layoffs in Jan are not told the truth. Every means necessary is to be used to keep employees in the dark until the cuts are announced. They are trying to stop early mass exodus and then quietly execute the hour reductions, If you feel an insecurity at your store that you never felt before, it is due to an expense cut coming on labor
As soon as the judge ruled on the merger it stopped the layoffs now! The judge is making them operate as two companies currently ! The judge will lose soon and the big cuts will happen and the new retail formats will be quickly implemented. We have 9 stores in the northeast that have been operating for 4 years under the new format. The stores operated under the newly created transition dept. this steering team worked on removing the hurdles to the roll out.
The bad PR was discussed with respect to the immediacy of making CVS cuts and simultaneously acquiring 50K Aetna employees. This is why we are business as usual. I agree that companies when merging will remove a lot of redundancy and more to my point on the timing I mentioned. Aetna and CVS are currently working together to figure out each others' synergy opportunities.
Laying people off in general is considered perfectly normal. Finally someone actually talks about layoffs and they’re questioned on why they are talking about layoffs. SMH.
Aren't mergers and eliminating redundancies considered perfectly normal? Why would that be considered bad PR or anything out of the ordinary? You don't need two accounting teams, two HR teams, etc etc