#productivity

Come on Comcast!! Folks are more productive when they can work office closer to home rather than commuting. Shall we start submitting gas expenses. Put your badging system as one system

interesting topic for layoffs related discussions

Work from home is a total joke!
HRBP, GVP, RVP, asset protection, and any other executive positions need to get back into stores 5 days a week ! Put offices in the stores so we can see for ourselves what these folks actually do! Most are making six figures working from home! That’s a disgrace !

This work from home nonsense is driving the company straight into the ground!

Belk has HRBP’s, GvPs, and RVP’S appearing to work full days with the occasional conference call, zoom meeting. when in reality they are at home running errands, watching television, doing yard work, and napping while the rest of us are actually managing the stores!! This is disgraceful and needs to stop!

Anyone else getting sick of being retired to come into the office, just to spend all day in Teams meetings, never taking to anyone face-to-face?

95% of my day is solo work, email/Teams messages, and Teams meetings, because there's always at least one person in some other location, so every meeting needs to be over Teams.

Why are we in the office if everyone is wearing headphones, only taking to each other online?

How is this improving productivity or culture?

Fake metrics
Fake conference calls
Fake Dispatches to make up my day so my supervisor meets his numbers
Fake busy work because our side of the business is dead

Counting down the days. Tick tock tick tock.

My job is potentially being eliminated. Two years of golf and automating repetitive work. I prefer to think of it as preparing the position to function without me.

Just one year ago, FLD told us that collaboration was fantastic. A tremendous success. The best collaboration anyone had ever seen. But now, apparently, one year later, collaboration has gone bad. Very bad. Nobody knows why. Nobody understands it. So naturally, the solution is to drag everyone back to the office. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Because nothing boosts productivity like spending two hours commuting to sit at a desk, wearing headphones, attending virtual meetings with colleagues sitting 10 metres away. Incredible innovation! And the best part? It's all about collaboration. Believe me, nobody collaborates better than people who are forced to be in the same building. We are going to make offices great again!

I took early retirement last year. During my time at Humana, I was always amazed by the number of lazy and preoccupied coworkers. Despite their constant smartphone scanning, long lunches and inevitable coffee runs, the work always got done.

This was especially true in the tower, where “the help” would always swoop in to tidy up the loose ends. All the world was their stage as they strolled across the check-bouncing salaries of those who kept them afloat.

Give them credit. They know how to play the game; some to the seven-figure level. It’s a different and lucrative brand of intelligence.

I just always wondered how they sleep.

As if the work is not enough, now there is a stupid initiative to progress to 0 inbox - management, I have a genuine question...are you daft? Do you want people to stop doing what they are doing and do this d-mb a-s training which teaches you to only interface if needed? You guys can keep inserting blocks in my calendar, I take immense pleasure in using that time to do virtually (hehe) anything other than training.

Come at me bro!

How did anyone get work done the last week? Share your story.

ApEX and other petrotech AI systems: Real current impact on your workflows or just management hype of incremental improvements?

Made about 100 Viva Engage posts this week and officially ran out of pictures in my phone. If visibility counts as productivity, I just had the best week of my career

1.Fiserv is hiring and promoting people who lack the skills needed to do the job.They are not even trying to learn.

1. When you respond in a teams message to a question they present by asking a question
   they then take that question to another employee and return with that employee’s answer.- stop responding to them via team if you can.
   .3. These same people SETUP meetings that waste your time .- stop showing up or answering questions in these meetings.

This is part of yalls problem

Leave the date of the layoff vague. Now people are barely able to work from anxiety, and we're not even sure it'll happen tomorrow. Self-sabotage at its best.

Anyone on a team firing on all cylinders? How are you getting with done?

No one can get any work done why don't they just come clean with who is being laid off

Are you getting the AI budget you need to make your new productivity goals?

This trash management team is doing nothing and constantly hiding. We’re about to put up another quarter of BS with zero turnaround to show. Productivity is sh-t in all the cores and people just talk about layoffs constantly.

Senior leadership has a metric to review every employees’ productivity across LOBs. They review the metric every quarter. RTO is not about sitting in the office, RTO is about delivering in the office.

There is no need for management in this day and time. They are all ignorant and slow down or throw a wrench in any progress in store. Positions in management are only filled by the most ridiculous and ignorant people. Please, Walmart Corp. Come up with a way for AI or something else to replace management and terminate all store level management. They serve zero purpose. Productivity and profits will greatly improve without them. We are wasting money, time, and productivity on ignorant people who do NOTHING!

I was under the impression that in certain states an employer must disclose what is being tracked.

For my team there has been zero transparency on what counts toward productive time and our leader flat out said that he didn’t want people to game the system. People simply wanted to know if they were logged into the network at work but attending an event or talking to a coworker but not actively on the computer would that count….since there would not be a lot of typing or mouse clicks.

Even tech companies like meta decided not to track their employees. Kinda ridiculous we are being treated like cr-p and talked to like children…I don’t know how much lower this company can go

This re--rd CEO can’t even lay people off properly. He is just creating anxiety and completely destroying productivity within the teams. I’ve never seen a CEO this bad and I’ve worked at 4 different Fortune 100 companies in the last 21 years.

Knowing layoffs are coming and having to wait for it to happen is pure torture. I'm barely getting any sleep and my productivity has plummeted. I wish it could already be over.

Or will they only result in layoffs?

After all the AI talk at the CB town hall, I'm curious if anyone has actually seen this stuff deliver meaningful productivity gains. I have not. On the contrary, I am seeing $$$ wasted and fools going around preaching about brigher future which will never come - snake oil. Sure, AI can automate repetitive tasks. But somebody still has to validate the output, fix mistakes, deal with exceptions and answer when something breaks in production. Are we actually changing how work gets done, or just expecting fewer FTEs to deliver the same results with some AI tools thrown in? Anyone in CB... TPX or whatever other group seeing real improvements, or is this mostly PowerPoint transformation at this point (we are really good in this tho)?

If they want to cover for the laid-off people, at least provide better speed ram rom computers, and speed applications, what the fu-k is this need to wait 5 seconds to load to next page in internal portals and systems.

Ok. I know this has nothing to do with layoffs. I just need to vent.

My 5 year old work PC su-ks. Takes 15 mins to boot and startup my apps. Then slow slow the rest of the day. Need to reboot once in a while. I just want to get my work done.

Going to IT somehow made it worse.

I miss PC refresh.
O

Can you please change your One Talk team, or at least move some members to other teams and bring in some new people? Today, AR stopped working and business is severely impacted, and still they have no clue.

What does the testing team do and why are they not able to find and fix this? It is a waste of money.

Verizon's worst product. They are charging us to pay these managers who don't want to work.

PepsiCo doesn't publish a standalone "layoff budget." The number that functions as one is the restructuring envelope for the 2019 Productivity Plan, which was expanded and extended through 2030. Here's where it stands per the latest 10-Q (quarter ended June 13, 2026).
The envelope
Total expected pre-tax charges of about $6.15 billion, roughly $5.1 billion of it cash. The mix is about 50% severance and other employee-related costs, 15% non-cash asset impairments from plant closures, and 35% other implementation costs (contract terminations, consulting). That makes the severance line roughly $3.1B over the life of the plan.
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Segment split: PBNA 25%, EMEA 25%, PFNA 20%, Corporate 15%, LatAm Foods 10%, Asia Pacific Foods 3%, IB Franchise 2%. PBNA is the single biggest bucket, ~$1.5B.
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Spent vs. remaining
Budget Booked thru 6/13/26 Left
Severance / employee ~$3.1B ~$1.84B ~$1.2B
Asset impairments ~$0.9B ~$0.6B ~$0.3B
Other ~$2.15B ~$1.35B ~$0.8B
Total $6.15B ~$3.79B ~$2.4B
Basis: plan-to-date through 12/27/2025 was $3,610M — $1,789M severance, $546M impairments, $1,275M other, plus $182M booked in the first 24 weeks of 2026 ($51M severance, $59M impairments, $72M other).
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Run-rate
FY2025 was the heaviest year at $983M, vs. $727M in 2024 and $445M in 2023.
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H1 2026 charges fell to $182M from $426M a year earlier, and cash restructuring payments were $264M vs. $387M. Q2 alone was only ~$49M, and PBNA actually recorded a $15M credit in Q2 — a reversal of previously estimated amounts.
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The severance accrual on the balance sheet at year-end 2025 was $308M; $172M of severance cash went out in H1 2026.
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Three things worth noting
The December 2025 Elliott-era reset didn't come with a new envelope. After Elliott's $4B stake, PepsiCo announced North America workforce reductions and a 20% cut to U.S. SKUs with cost actions starting in 2026, and the HQ cuts targeted Chicago, Plano and Purchase — but $6.15B is unchanged in both 2026 10-Qs. The heavy booking happened in FY2025; H1 2026 P&L charges are the lightest in three years.
Layoff News Now
Resume Mansion LLC
The mix shifted toward physical footprint. The Q3 2025 filing put impairments at 10% of the plan; the 2026 filings say 15%. That lines up with the closures now landing: Cheverly, MD bottling — 143 laid off, manufacturing and warehouse ended Sept. 14, sales and delivery continuing; a Frito-Lay distribution plant in California earlier this year, 248 jobs; 105 permanent layoffs at PepsiCo Beverages Sales in Columbia, SC, last day Oct. 18. Those hit impairments and severance in H2 2026.
pep-20250906 +3
~$2.4B total / ~$1.2B severance left to book over 4.5 years is a lower annual pace than 2024–25 unless the plan gets raised again. The December outlook targets a record year of productivity savings in 2026 and at least 100 bps of core operating margin expansion in aggregate over the next three fiscal years — if that requires more headcount action than the remaining envelope supports, expect the $6.15B to move in the FY2026 10-K

Can BP do a proof of concept and identify those toxic personnel who benefited from the BL era and were artificially promoted in an effort to detoxify bp?

Also identify middle managers who’s claim to fame is making more process and hurdles…identifying just 20 of these operatives and discarding them would do wonders for productivity, profitability, and safety..

Either do it or don't, but keeping us guessing is getting really annoying. I'd like to be able to fully focus on my work, not have to balance between my productivity and worrying about the proverbial axe above my head all the time.

By: Sheila Dang August 24, 2026

MIDLAND, Texas — In rural west Texas where oil rigs and pump jacks dot the sparse flat landscape, an ExxonMobil contractor sits in a small office on a drilling rig, using controls on a screen to operate robotic machinery and move tall steel pipes weighing roughly 2,000 pounds.

This work would usually require human overseers standing on the rig floor, the most common location for accidents on a rig.

Exxon, the largest oil producer by volume in the U.S., operates more than 30 drilling rigs in the Permian Basin, two of which are automated rigs with robotic equipment. By 2028, the company aims to transition half of its fleet to automated rigs to reduce the need for workers to perform potentially dangerous work and increase efficiency to drill wells faster, an executive told Reuters.

The Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, the biggest U.S. oilfield, revolutionized energy markets two decades ago when development of the shale basin turned the U.S. into one of the leading oil-producing countries. But the relatively quick decline rate of shale wells has prompted drillers to develop more technologies to extract the oil. Some in the industry are also concerned about when the Permian’s production could begin to decline.

Exxon plans to grow its Permian production by almost 40% to 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030. By contrast, rival oil major Chevron plans to hold production steady at about 1 million boepd, focusing instead on free cash flow.

The automated drilling rigs are part of a combination of technologies and strategies Exxon is using to boost production, said Bart Cahir, Exxon‘s senior vice president of unconventional, in an interview on the rig.

“When we take people off the rig floor, those same individuals are now able to think ahead and plan for the next operation and that combination gives us efficiency,” he said. “This is the productivity play.”

The company installed its first automated rig, supplied by drilling contractor Helmerich & Payne, last year. It drilled two miles horizontally underground in a little over six days, the third fastest time in Exxon‘s history.

Exxon‘s use of automated rigs in the Permian and its goal of expanding the fleet has not been previously reported.

Reducing risk and drilling more
On one of Exxon‘s automated rigs in Midland, a gate surrounds the drilling floor with a sign reading “Red Zone: Restricted Area.” A drawing of the Grim Reaper illustrates the risk that workers face around heavy equipment and pressurized systems.

Where workers would usually help move columns of drill pipe over two stories tall, robotic arms now position the pipes and connect them to a drill string. This allows drilling to continue deeper into the wellbore.

Employees on the rig communicate with Exxon‘s central operations team in Houston to determine the precise movements the robotic system should make.

Removing workers from the so-called Red Zones allows them to focus on other operations on the rig and reduces variability in the work, meaning more feet per day can be drilled, Cahir said.

“In the history of well drilling activity, about a third of significant injuries that occur happen on the rig floor,” he said. “By getting people out of that higher risk area, we’re essentially eliminating that risk.”

Exxon plans to expand automated rigs to a quarter of the fleet next year and then half of the fleet by 2028, Cahir said.

Exxon is also developing a suite of more than 40 technologies to double its oil recovery from the Permian by the early 2030s. The shale industry typically extracts just 10% of the oil in the ground due to the tight, compacted rock.

I forgot how much noise, how much constant chatter, how many distractions there are at the office. I swear I was half as productive on the RTO days than I was when working from home, and I know there are many others in the same boat. Can somebody explain to me the logic of intentionally crippling the productivity of your entire workforce?

Open copilot and ask “What AI productivity tools is Centene considering?”

SBHP recently started using PEGA to track "productivity". However, no one has a clear answer on how it works or what it's tracking. No one in our department has above 67% and people are being told to just click around more. Obviously that's not the solution because everyone would be successful at that point. Does anyone have any clear metrics or tactics that work?

Anybody noticed that their productivity has gone down since the return to office mandate has been in place?

Me for instance, I have noticed my productivity has gone down while the hours worked and in office have increased. It's quite unmotivating being monitored for being in office for 8 hours, as well as all my activity being monitored. Needless to say I am miserable.

• Study finds remote workers are far happier and more productive
• Remote workers reported much higher well-being, but were also less likely to leave their role
• Study also dispels myth that remote workers might feel alienated from co-workers

A survey of 7,704 employees at a large US healthcare organization by researchers at the Leeds School of Business found fully remote workers reported the highest levels of well-being, with those entirely office-based reporting the lowest level.

The findings, published in Frontiers in Psychology, also noted that it was unable to discover significant evidence that remote workers felt any less connected to colleagues or workplace culture, once again disproving the myth against flexible working.

Stay flexible
"This suggests you let people work remotely if they want to work remotely," said Stefanie Johnson, professor of organizational leadership and information analytics at the Leeds School of Business and co-author of the study. "Taking away people's choice of how they work is probably not going to help them in terms of their well-being."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/people-who-want-to-work-remotely-are-unsurprisingly-actually-more-productive-and-happier/ar-AA2aipIh

So your IC will take a hit if you do not meet workday persona.

Has anyone seen the data Ron used to support his BS claims about "productivity" gains while being in the office?