I often hear that the pandemic came as a good excuse to close offices and lay off 10,000 people, and I saw that someone mentioned it on this forum as well. I wonder if you really think so, that it’s just an excuse? If you do, I wonder what do you think, how would things look like today if there was no pandemic, would these people have been fired under some other pretext perhaps?
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The quit rate is significantly impacted by the call centers which typically have 40%ish turnover but that is about standard for call centers. Say what you want but at least SF had kept all jobs within the US.
Agree with he comment, their egos will get in the way but also remember it is their business model. At the most basic level SF is a puppy mill. Problem is they will get greedy as usual and shoot their wad way too soon and over play their hand as you basically stated. It always happens just like it did when they did the Auto & Fire reorg and cleaned house with the SMs/CMs. They had over 125+ SMs take the buyout vs. accepting their job offers. Get while the gettin is good! Now in Fire company they are not staffed correctly and have a lot of inexperience so that has turned that into a complete Sh-t show! They are starting to talk about making sure you are paying what we owe for claims...ha ha...id–ts. When you use ECRs, don't train your people/inexperienced and are understaffed people just pay the claim, (gotta hit your production number, wrap time, OCS and schedule adherence) and move on. Guess what MT.....your indemnity expense go up offsetting all the savings from letting people go and using a lemming work force. Execs never learn..there are no shortcuts for running a industry leading company, eventually your decisions, ignorance and arrogance come back to get you!!!!
SF Execs could see WFH as a cost cutting opportunity. Or they could look at the poor job market, realize they have leverage, and force people back to the office mid-year after most people are vaccinated. The problem if they do that is that those who can easily transfer their skills elsewhere, and love WFH, may not tolerate it and look elsewhere.
My prediction is that ego will trump practicality and people will be forced back into offices to play the -ss in chair game. There is something in the executive and management psyche where they get a rush from seeing their underlings trudge into cubicles and call centers to toil away for them. Plus conducting extramarital affairs is much more difficult while your spouse is under the same roof.
How do they know what percentage of people are white, black, Hispanic, etc at the company? Are they asking everyone what they are? Are they (hr) just doing the eye test at the employees? Are they just hiring people regardless of qualifications just to make diversity hiring numbers look good.? If they have the highest quit rate in Bur of Labor statistics, and the majority of new hires are minorities, seems like one could argue that. And why only 3% Asian hires?
COVID is their card. They will kick you when you are down. Remember what they talk about behind closed doors is not how they talk or act in public. They are professional politicians.
As requested, this is the version that was not shared with employees for obvious reasons. Think about it...holy sh-t, it just not the opinion of people on this we-site but hundreds if not thousands of people that came through the doors and said this company and job is the worst and quit!!! Yes it is intentional, this is not an employee focused company.
https://lethal-industry.com/business/how-mentorship-guides-victor-terrys-initiatives-as-state-farms-first-chief-diversity-officer/
In 2019, 9.4% of State Farm employees quit their jobs, compared to 3% of Americans who quit their jobs in August 2019, the highest quit rate recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. State Farm workers with longer tenure are more likely to stay: The share of employees who quit with five to nine years with the company is 1.2%, while employees with 10 or more years is below 1%.
What if MT was not the CEO?
COVID 19 has brought many changes to the entire working world; not just to State Farm. The way we work changed in a matter of days, and the result was “oh, this pretty much worked out OK”. There’s no evil conspiracy in play here. We’ve hit a sudden, fundamental shift in both employer and employee needs. Not all the ramifications are clear yet, but a brief perusal of nearly any business news shows that everybody is going through it.
In 2019 State Farm had the highest quit rate, according to the bureau of Labor Statics, of any company in the United States. Source, please?
@1vyh the technical meaning of lay off is a temporary period where the company does not need you but eventually can call you back to work. That is not the more common usage or meaning, especially on this message board. At SF they have not called employees into the office on a Friday morning and told them they have no job (unless you are being terminated), they do it over the course of months to years. There have been thousands of employees in the last few years that have been let go, think Bank most recently. We have closed about 10 LOCs already and most of those people were sent packing with a transition payment, SMs and CMs 3 years ago were cut with a few months notice. Bakersfield has a drop-dead date of Oct 2021 and then those people are out of a job.
When the pandemic hit last March, it has almost been three years since the last list of office closures had been announced. Of those 11 offices announced three years ago, all but one or two of them had already shut down by 2020. We were due for a new list /schedule to close the remaining 12 offices...it was coming soon, I’m sure. So now that they are not going to be able to let go employees a few hundred here, a few hundred there, by closing offices over a three-year schedule like they did before, they will have to figure out a way to whittle down the ranks of the 10,000 former 12 LOC employees who are being allowed to “work from home for now”. So the big unknown is how long will “for now“ be?
no one has ever been "laid off" from State Farm ... just to be clear
to be clear....10,000 employees have not been laid off.
What the pandemic did was accelerate things, as MT stated, that was coming 3-5 years down the road. anyway. What it does is give our executive office the leverage they lost when we had a great job market. In 2019 State Farm had the highest quit rate, according to the bureau of Labor Statics, of any company in the United States. They had to give-in on soo much, the point system, additional time off, couldn't staff areas properly, high turnover so additional staffing was required, you get the point. Now they feel free to run roughshod over employees while they have a chance because it is much harder to go find another job. They know they have a small window as economic activity will pickup and hiring will again. Most people are never going to go back to the office after being used to working from home and they will go find opportunities that offer that perk. Either at SF or somewhere else. I sense a return to the suburbs and rural towns at a much higher rate than pre-pandemic. Also they have waded into the PC culture and I think Exec thinks that is the best space for our future growth. Good luck with that, McDonalds tried that about a decade ago and had huge struggles.....have you watched a Sprite commercial lately...I'm not talking about race.... but the socioeconomic groups we are staffing with (of all races, age, background, s-x etc...) do not share the same view of the world, work ethic or moral and values necessary to run an industry leader. Like taking the best college football team to the Super Bowl! Or a preacher to preach the gospel in a wh–e house.... When SF finally falls and it tricks unravel everything, it will be a sad disaster. I think Sears, JCPenny, Kmart, GE, Blackberry, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Enron, Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard...and all the other once great companies that are gone or shells of themselves.
We have established that we do not need AFS in the field, nor commercial BUS. Look for these jobs to dwindle further. Sales leader positions are numbered in my opinion or will look differently. It seems the role of any tech company is to eliminate humans in the decision process. Look for that to continue with UW and to some extent express claims, auto and fire renters. We may be an indy force by 2025. . Just my two cents.
I don’t see it as an excuse rather a method of jump starting a plan that has been in the works...slow riding until now. Reality is this plan has been put in place to reduce people / facilities/ costs in our industry that we’ve maintained for years and now not meeting our goals. I do think that had this pandemic not occurred we would be facing a much harsher decision. At least we have work from home option until final decisions are made. Major cuts are coming no avoiding that monkey, I just hope that the axe starts falling on some of the lame VP’s , assistant VP’s , sales , service , etc...and duplicate field leadership jobs . Agents feel free to share your thoughts....