Email from CK confirms 3 day return to office, many I know don't have option to do this so will need to leave - SAP know this and it's one of the reasons they're doing it. Questions asked during all-hands were mostly ignored-focusing instead on the board excitement about yet another restructure. Question about further outright layoffs was also not answered either way.
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The technology which we have developed will lead us to our doom!!
RTO tracking news - https://www.ft.com/content/95ee76b8-f886-4334-9e98-32ec98985c50
“ EY starts monitoring UK staff office attendance with turnstile data
Anonymised statistics to be used in parts of the business to increase compliance of hybrid working guidelines”
Upon hire, my role even in the posting title stated remote. I am a little short of 40 miles from our local office, public transportation is not accessible out this far, and health issues that came up over COVID have left me with no safe or reliable way to get to office.
Though my role was designated remote and it is what I agreed to upon hire, does not matter. RTO! Announced in the middle of the second biggest wave of the pandemic. Big slap in the face to all employees who need accommodations or may be immunocompromised.
SAP...morale just hit the toilet. Be advised.
@3ecn+1quROVMD In our location we've previously been told if you don't like the new rules that maybe SAP isn't for you and essentially..to leave
First of all, a severance package is paid to avoid legal issues with the ex-employee. It's a fee the company pays to stay out of court challenges. Second, if the employee is not able to come to the office and refusing, what is the company then doing, firing him? On what ground? I doubt the premise very much that this is to avoid severance packages.
@3fnv+1quROVMD: You are absolutely right about the not to move too far bit. However, keep in mind that in Germany, there was (and still is) a works council agreement on mobile work since 2018 that allowed us to work from anywhere as long as it is not 100% and it is aligned with our direct managers. Those agreements are legally binding and as strong as an addendum to your contract.
I know many colleagues who came to a very flexible work agreement with their managers and moved back to their families (also keep in mind that Walldorf is a tiny sh*thole town that you would only want to live in because of SAP).
Now SAP wants us to get back to work in office three days a week. This is not only a breach of the works council agreement, it takes us back to times before 2018 (yes, long before COVID). The company clearly wants to cancel that agreement though (which they can with three months grace) but thanks to Germany legislation, they will not be able to cancel it without implementing a successor which needs to be negotiated with the works council.
Still, you know what a pledge is? It was broken. The trust of 100k employees was broken overnight with just one email. SAP always claimed to be special. Not anymore…
As an ex-SAP employee, I find this hilarious! Typical whining from a bunch of spoiled SAP employees. I was there in 2021 and I clearly remember that we were told not to move too far away from the office. Did you pay attention to that? Now you are crying over it. Remember the time when you had to go to the office 5 days a week because it was part of your job? And you did it because you wanted to have a job? Grow up!
Sometimes I really think the Germans forget how backward America is. How we don’t have things like a good public transportation system to get to work, childcare, healthcare, and a quality of life. It’s hard to admit,but this wfh was the best quality of life we could have had.
To... @1huf+1quROVMD... the Manager in NA... guess you didn't get the email about the 40 mile+ exception????
If your boss already approved your home office prior to the pandemic, then you are fine. If your boss did not, then you might want to post your resume and linked in. Sooner the better.
to answer this: I saw the note about the NA policy and I am a bit confused about it. What does it mean that somebody "already had an agreement prior to the announcement" to WFH?
You need to change you residency and work model in the system this will required approvals (manager and manager of manager I believe... it may become harder if all this changes coming) then it will show as home office based employee, otherwise you are considered in the system office based.
Work with your manager, if you have a business case. If this is not granted then seek an exception but I heard it will be very hard to get one.
Why is everyone saying this has to be "fair"? If there are teams whose managers allow them to WFH, then they do. If you are able to negotiate an exception, then you can. A workforce is not a democracy, all workers are not equal, and if things are not evenly applied across the company, you can be disappointed, but there's no reason it can't be done that way.
To put it in a nutshell, everyone that they want to be laid off will be laid off.
SAP and not paying employees what they are worth.
Name a better duo. Glad I left. Feel bad for my friends who are still there and moved to cool locations believing in this joke of a leadership team. Back to NSQ you go!
4 years full time WFH, at company request, now we're being compelled to add, in some cases, 10-15 weekly commute hours, put health at risk for office attendance and hire additional childcare, not to mention that some have moved further from SAP offices, all to merely engage with customers and colleagues remotely when in the office is surely enough for people to start making constructive dismissal claims? Would be interested in any feedback from those with legal background.
speaking of division among teams, there was also mention of more rigorous individual performance review processes. More to come next week, but curious what that will look like. i feel it will only cause even more divide and tension …
I saw the note about the NA policy and I am a bit confused about it. What does it mean that somebody "already had an agreement prior to the announcement" to WFH?
Means something was in writing? which I don't think anybody would have this. Do we all backdate something to get around this? Can I say that once Covid came in, I began to work from my summer/vacation house which fits' the 40 mile?
In any case it's a bad move from a morale perspective, we will create the "haves" and the "have nots" and cause division among the teams. But like was said below, in short order all teams will have figured out how to get around this policy, just like all of the other ones which came down.
I would be more concerned about what was expected to be accomplished by this announcement ( like possible departures) and what the next step could be, like a RIF.
Regarding the post @1huf+1quROVMD
There was an email sent out today to all North American employees stating exactly this:
"Recognizing that some employees reside and work today in locations where there is no SAP office, North America employees currently working in a business-approved Home Office location greater than 40 miles / 64 kilometers from the nearest SAP office may remain Full Home Office. This exception only applies to North America employees currently in this situation."
Dear Manager in NA,
The 40 mile part is in the email that came out at 3:02pm est from SAP Office of the President. It’s true.
Anyone ever heard of the show "Let's make a Deal" ?
Well let us all get introduced to it, because without any enforcement thru out the company as to how this will be monitored, we will have so many "back room" deals made for people with connections to continue WFH, we will be able to start our own show with thousands of episodes.
Regarding the post: @1lmu+1quROVMD
I am a manager in NA and have not been made aware of any such exceptions about a 40 mile distance (curious how such a number would even have been determined? )
However the mail from Christian was clear there will be NO EXCEPTIONS made to this policy. Therefore this is bad information and could not imagine that in light of Christians note that all locations in North America ( where there is some 20,000 employees) would on the heels of his message immediately be excluded if the employees meet this criteria. This would have an immediate response from other countries ( especially like Germany where the Works Council would demand a similar exception)
Not a chance this is true.
It’s great that I’ll now have to pay for child care..to drive to an office to do the same job I’ve been able to do without issue for years. Especially when the whole “Didn’t quite have the year we needed for increases” nonsense rolls out. I love paying more to work..losing time to help my overall quality of life….for what? Sad to see this completely out of touch decision being made. But hey…stock price keeps going up!!!
Imagine being a manager and having to defend this rubbish to my team
I am beyond disgusted
The policy in NA will take into consideration distance from the nearest office (more than 40 miles) and if there was an agreement in place prior to the announcement. So... if you are in the US or Canada, live more than 40 miles from an office, and already have a WFH agreement in place you're good. Funny... 40 miles from the office is really not that far... at least not for a North American.
Having to pay to park near the office, having no inexpensive food options nearby, and having to lose hours commuting. Excellent. I just took a 3000 pay cut.
The biggest and most widely touched reorg during my 12+ years. And we are talking about WFH and RTO.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
With the coming departure of the last founder from the helm at decision making at board level, all bets are off the table and any drastic measures could be taken to increase the cloud market share and revenue. 10B by 2028 from current 2B, you can do the maths. It is still an on premise player, no matter how much they market about moving to the cloud. They will require a lot of change to make it happen and it won’t come cheap. Some hints were given about making such changes like moving towards cloud focused product management roles and being more accountable and measurable with new performance improvement plans for employees. Let’s see how the story unfolds…
The Works Council is represented on the Supervisory Board, not the Executive Board, but your point is a good one.
Surely this was a topic discussed and decided at Board level. Half of the Board are our SAP employees, from Works Council.
Can one of them please provide some information about what has happened here? They are supposed to represent the employees and now would be good for them to provide an explanation to us. What did they do to require the company to stick to the pledge the company made 2 years ago?
If we get no report from any of them, then I see this employee representation on the Board as nothing more than mere window dressing
Who is Tracey?
Traci works on RUSHING TO OBLIVION not RETURN TO OFFICE.
Clear for me that this was part of a plan to reduce workforce without the news of a larger layoff( which can disrupt the investors in market and our stock price)
SAP knows there is no recourse anyone has for taking away WFH, we are all employees at will and nothing is a guarantee ( unless you got it in your contract).
We should be more concerned about part 2 of this plan, which will be a RIF. There is a number the Board has in mind by which they want to reduce ( and offices they want to close) and depending on how many leave because of the RTO, then the balance will be made up in an impending layoff.
Basically the company wants to start Q1/2024 consolidating labor cost and this was part one of their plan.
likely only an issue for NA employees as it typically the case
I can only repeat what has been said by multiple people below and that is this WILL NOT be applied broadly to everybody. SAP never does anything which apply to everybody. There are not just teams but locations ( especially those who were acquisitions , where the whole office has been WFH - and most likely will continue to be WFH going forward)
Already there have most likely been thousands of globally team calls today about this topic and until there is someway to enforce this all around the company ( which there will not be) then this will be something which is only just words and it will be done on a case by case situation vs company wide and therefore people who were doing this before, will continue to do so, at least until Renjen takes over later this year and then we see what happens but for now I see no real changes. This has always been how SAP operate, somebody comes up with a policy and in 15 minutes everybody knows how to get around it.
It is all a big clusterfck. When pledge-to-flex was announced in 2021, there was an FAQ document which answered to a question that went like „Can I move back to my home city“ with „Employees should live within commute distance to an SAP office“. So the company can simply say: you have been warned folks.
I should have listened to that advice… somebody else already posted the word betrayal and that is the feeling I am experiencing the most right now.
I think this note defending the company was coming from CK himself !
I think its outrageous and for anyone saying otherwise was not around in 2021 when they stated we would be allowed to WFH.Many have moved and bought places far from offices. In the Canadian economy were living in it's unaffordable to live nearby to cities with these SAP offices. Health will also be affected as eating at a restaurant 3x a week, even if paid by the company is not the best. Furthermore, they don't even have room for everyone to come in at the same time. So we'd go to the office with no monitors. This is simply going to lead to people being unproductive. I quote from the same CEO in 2021 "Our pledge to flex is another expression of our profound respect for our employees.". So what's happened since then that they have lost respect for us. Is this even legal to have let go of employees when they have stated previously an approval for all of us in black and white?
In response to the person defending the company,
Many peoples issue is that they are broadly applying this, ignoring the fact that many SAPers were in work-from-home roles prior to Covid.
Those people are being disrupted in a major way, their full time home offices taken away.
Target the temporary-Covid-related home office folks would be fair, but targeting ALL employees is too far and counterproductive.
Listen everybody, many other companies started months ago to return to the office. This is not just a SAP mandate.
The Company has been more than fair with the employees over the years. So why is there such a pushback on this?
We all have really nice offices, free lunch, gym's. etc. So we have to come back to such a situation and that is somehow a bad thing? Let's get real, if SAP advertised what they provide to the employees, and said you had to come in the office for 3 days a week, the line would be a mile long for people who would want to work for a company like SAP.
Let's be happy with what we have, believe me it could be a helluva lot worse.
"IF" this is really going to be implemented across all teams so we don't wind up with the typical SAP favoritism ( a la, Winners Circle for the sales organization, while peanuts for everyone else), then we need a way to be fair with everyone.
We have our badge system and so it should be fairly easy to validate who is in the office 3 days out of the week.
If this does turn out to be something which is only applied to certain teams, then I would see demands being made to either go back to WFH or devise a system ( like badging) where it applies to everyone.
What's fair is fair for everyone ( BTW, in almost 30 years I have never been invited to Winners Circle, while I know Sales people who have been here less than 3 years who get to this extravaganza).
This is only the beginning of what we will see with a new Chairman coming in.
A year from now we will look back and wonder what happened to the SAP we all knew.