Hi all. I have been through layoff cycles at a few other companies. This was my first at BP. Fortunately, I was selected, but the majority of the staff on my team was not. At my previous companies, the first action taken was to cancel or not renew any contractors to minimize the impact on full time staff. This was not the case in my department at all where contractors now outnumber staff by a large margin. Why weren't any contractors let go?
4 replies (most recent on top)
Contractors might have the skill sets that permanent employees don’t have
I would add that BP is not very honest about how they are handling this. I know of some examples where people are let go and then BP will recruit for the same role with the excuse of needing new and different skills. I guess they’re just going to exploit the situation caused by the pandemic to replace existing staff with cheaper employees.
It’s the battle between fixed costs (employees) and variable costs (contractors), BP has been following this path for 20yrs ironically often using GE as the example.
When you need to save money urgently you keep permanent staff and get rid of contractors, when your business is slowly dying you shed permanent staff and keep contractors.
because contractors heads are excluded from bp headcount hence they do not make the 10,000 reduction headline that has been pledged to investors.