Ricoh is shrinking. I’m sure some areas of the country are doing better than others, but it appears to me that the company is turning away from it’s traditional business of selling AND servicing it’s own equipment. It is allowing dealers to take over more and more of the customer base. They are attempting to enter new areas, such as Amazon lockers, robotics, probably even point of sale devices. I think some areas will have enough of this new business to stay afloat, but probably will still shrink somewhat. Other areas will not fare so well. They will lose market share and not be able to expand into these new “adjacencies”. These places will really be shrinking. I think the company is ok with this. You are just a number to them, a blip on a spreadsheet. I encourage everyone to evaluate their position in their particular areas. If you are not in an area that has a decent chance of survival, you should probably think about leaving soon while you can leave on your terms. Also remember that there is a youth movement happening and older employees are basically the enemy now. If I was old enough, I would have taken the voluntary separation deal that was offered. I will be leaving in the next 12-18 months anyway because the negatives are out-weighing the positives. Good luck everyone!
15 replies (most recent on top)
Tee hee hee, all the low performers commenting here....bye bye!
They just laid off 3 in my area, senior techs.
Layoffs continue as of this week 7/01/2024 3 techs per team all over. Which means managers are next with the teams being that small. I agree with the above comments. There new mantra is "chase the work!" because they are so shorted with techs. Management can not open calls for service any more and the client must do it. If a tech is on site and asked to look at another machine he can't. Customer service is not practiced any more. They have lost so many major accounts its amazing.
We all need to Stay Calm and Carry on. Understand that hard times come with hard decisions. Savings from off-shore labour and skimping on service fuels exciting R&D innovations such as, T-shirt printers. Maybe drive for uber between calls.
Well, same situation at Xerox. Good thing I woke up. I'm leaving to a software startup. Good people skills and technical skills are always a rare combination valued elsewhere. Leave! And be happy :-)
Sad that loyal employees who gave this company 110% are being let go to be replaced by Door Dash Joe. These older technicians on the top % of producers only to be given very very low raises while management make them feel they should be thankful they have jobs. Such a sad sad way to treat your technicians. Bean counters are sitting behind their desks using stats and data to dictate how technicians should fix machines. They are forgetting the human factor and real life connection these employees provide. Shame.on you Ricoh. I am not a direct employee but my love ones are.
raises with management making them feel like they agould be thanking Ricoh they have jobs
I would agree that this is why they are doing this. It's just making doing our jobs more difficult. Now if a customer is having troubles placing calls, we techs have to call our managers and wait in line to get a call placed. For a company that is customer centric, this doesn't seem like the way to do this. Maybe they'll offer some severance packages and more of us could leave.
It's ridiculous that they took away the ability to create calls from the techs. Supposedly they did this because some techs were creating calls even when they had calls and the overflow was going to their neighboring techs causing increased response times. Ok, this is true. But why punish everyone? Management knows who is doing this but they are not stopping the individuals. Management hasn't disciplined anyone lately. We certainly have techs that are horrible, but they don't want to write up anyone. I think the pool of potential replacements is so shallow that they cant get rid of anyone.
The latest that Ricoh is doing is taking away the techs ability to place calls themselves. You now have to wait around for calls to come in. No more dropping by to check on customers. So I'm sure the bean counters will see this as an opportunity to cut more people. And I see where everybody has to drive ridiculous amount of miles in between calls because of this. My guess is that Ricoh will be giving the bulk of it's business to dealers.
Ricoh's Donna Venable is attempting to save Ricoh USA by sending American jobs to the Philippines. Not just sending the jobs but holding the American employees being let go responsible to TRAIN another company's (IBM) BPO employees.
IT'S insane and DEMORALIZING as a human to be expected to train your replacement for the EXACT same job....not that the job is going away. NO it's the same job duties but being completed by employees that get $.02 on the US Dollar! Saving Ricoh on headcount/salaries to show Ricoh USA as a viable company. Ricoh WILL NOT MAKE IT! They will tank, paper is out!
I would like to know how Donna Venable determined that the Filipino's would be a good replacement for employees that KNOW ACCESS and EXCEL....
I am sick of this 6 months later of training my replacement employee in another country while Ricoh holds us hostage for our severance after 20 years of committment to Ricoh having sound financial processes. There will be TONS of errors and issues once this is all said and done. First we were told we would know in October whether we would be retained or severance. It is now December and we STILL don't have a game plan for our families and our bills. HATE RICOH USA
just demoralizing to work there these days
UW and Ricoh; top 2 dis-functional organizations in North America. UW CEO scams a yearly salary over $1Million, and donates $0 to his own cause, Ricoh? Nothing but a sinking ship, Lotta great employees being treated like garbage. Service & Logistics led by frauds
Drxd- you ain't kidding! Low raises for YEARS! Also have felt pressure in the past about United way from management, very upsetting! I've watched several newbies walk out and hear about it from other areas too. Hopefully leaving this nightmare soon.
Ricoh going down in flames, seasoned techs with tons of knowledge being let go for guys from Home Depot parking lots with zero experience. What's even a bigger joke is management pushing "customer service" and "don't put in parts" agenda like there's no tomorrow. Ricoh also have the balls to ask techs to donate to the United Way when everybody got 1% or less on our reviews. We already had a couple newbies quit and they haven't even worked a year yet. They said In & Out Burger pays more, less stress.
They need a union.