Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

Bill will make AEP great again for shareholder value. Employees stand by. We are going to chop wood.

Draining the swamp leaves an empty basin filled with fecal matter, toxins and decay. The slurry is drained away and the most concentrated toxins remain in the sludge at the bottom of the swamp. It will require a great deal more than draining the swamp to restore the vibrant wetlands of a functioning ecosystem. All the crony sludge must be removed, contained and neutralized, rendering it no longer a threat to the professional corporate culture. This most often requires a Superfund Site Designation.

Hopefully he will drain the swamp. However, he will really have to look at the leaders of the company with a bias. And ask are they truly leaders or are they bullies with an ego.

This may be an unpopular post, in my humble opinion Bill is spot on. He has been on the road talking to the various operating companies and learning details about company issues. I feel like he has developed a good plan to get us moving in the right direction. I appreciate our stated goals to provide stable and affordable electricity. I believe the best way to achieve goals is to publish quality metrics that we all work to improve. That said, he has to convince a ton of managers to get on board. Moves to flatten the organization will help. As a long-term employee, I am staying curious. Who's with me??

I hope there are no tax cuts for AEP. We should not give tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.

Indoctrinate, Assimilate and Subjugate are the goals of our crony corporate culture. We are not captive workers in an authoritarian regime, who have been brainwashed that their individual identity is their employer and as long as the employer is doing well, they are doing well. Young employees are struggling to remain employees because their cost of living far exceeds their compensation and they will hopefully retire with a 401K, no pension and no health care but its okay corporate officers' compensation are steadily increasing and major shareholders' greed is being satisfied while everyone else is appallingly disgusted and disenfranchised.

AEP does not value military service.

The question is not just about money. The real question is, what is AEPs values, mission and purpose. Those are not clear. Also, how are their associates included in their plans. AEP leadership has changed, how do they view employees and their roles with the company.

The main thread across all of the comments have been, leadership su-ks, it's going to take a long time to fix, if ever. Any costs are bore by the employees and not leadership. Financial benefits are weighted towards leadership and not to the employees doing the work.

Lack of common sense and common virtue in leadership is driving poor reliability and affordability of the essential service we provide to our customers. How many times have we been asked, "How do we improve reliability?" and how many times have we answered, "Cut the damn right of ways, eliminating all lateral and vertical encroachment on distribution lines." The answer is common sense and all these highly educated and compensated managers choose to ignore the obvious solution. In doing so they are compromising the safety of damage assessors, line workers and contractors. The overgrown and inaccessible right of ways dramatically increases assessment and restoration times. If you can't see the primary, you can't tell if it is on the insulators or on the ground. Drones are a tool but they do not climb through dense vegetation that makes it impossible to see where you are stepping or what is three feet in any direction including up to get to the damage and fix it. Safety First, until it costs a dollar.

The obvious solution to the overwhelming majority of problems plaguing American Electric Power is employee elected representation on the corporate board of American Electric Power. Disciplined, virtuous accountability that values their integrity and selflessness more than their advancement and enrichment. The undesirable employees, who shall not sell out or go along to get along are your most valuable assets because they refuse to compromise their values and principles. They are and shall always be their brothers' keeper. They are the only reason our customers have not come for the heads of corporate management.

"We have a lot of wood to chop yet around the company," AEP CEO Bill Furman said on a company earnings call. Furman declined to say which parts of the company could be put up for sale. - Reuters Glad I'm out of there! For those remaining behind it must not feel good to be considered as potential wood to be chopped out.

Platitudes are easy. Changing an entrenched crony leadership culture that protects its own has proven to be an insurmountable task in previous reorganizations. Aspiring for excellence through innovation requires resolute determination capable of overcoming the institutionalized crony clique's invested self-interests.

Yea man idk this whole working for AEP thing just doesn’t seem very cash money.

In the past, you would replace the lead with 30-50 yrs with someone with 20-30 yrs. The folks below would move up a notch and you would hire someone new. Now, you've lost the most experience person to retirement, the next in line to a buy out since they could bridge to retirement. Next layer left for better positions somewhere else so that leaves the new guy and the intern. I forgot about the TCS contractors who knows cr-p about the business but knows how to meet SLAs by working the system. I'm so glad I'm on that retirement list. Good luck to everyone, you'll need it and no I am not coming back as a contractor.

@4Jopu+1qB6FXi3 "du*m"

4Jnsc+1qB6FXi3 - Younger employees that are still there have few options. They’re either too lazy or too du*m to go anywhere else. Otherwise they would have left already.

Younger employees are looking at their long tenure colleagues and realizing shrinking compensation for enriching corporate officers and major shareholders is not a viable career path for achieving the American Dream. Grinding day in and day out to for a continuously shrinking share of the prosperity is ludicrous. Crony corporate culture rigs way too many promotions to ensure crony corporate culture is sustained stifling any innovation in favor of effortless and comfortable mediocrity.

The loss of Boomers is a great point. AEP is a company of experienced people. There’s no real structured pipeline to replenish talent, so the best folks are almost all close to retirement. Some were forced out over the last year, and some will be retiring within the next few. I shudder to think where we’ll be then.

There is some young talent in Transmission and TFS though. I hope those folks stick around.

The company will have to deal with the exodus of Boomers over the next few years. With those retirements so will the knowledge they have. None of that will be replaced. Sc--w the company if it think that I'm going to stick around 3 days a week to train someone or some guy in India. You made this mess, now live with the effects of it. That will be my feelings when I leave. I heard that from someone this summer when he left, he was not going to help with the transition when he left or so strike around a few days a week I think most boomers have the same feelings. I'll take my retirement and just leave. I turn 65 next year and I'm done.

Our corporate culture has never been more fragile. Severances have left a workforce that is just functioning despite itself. Leadership realizes a few key retirements or resignations shall lead to a catastrophic cascading failure of corporate structure that shall leave major shareholders' greed fest a smoking crater of value destruction. It is imperative that corporate management rebuild employees' trust, sense of shared sacrifice and shared reward to head off a mass stampede of talent which shall leave a woefully inadequate and incompetent herd of ego strokers to run the company into the ground. Employees are in control and corporate management has its back to the Wall Street wall.

It feels like ichan is pulling a page from the ge jack welch playbook. Raising the dividend for shareholders, slashing labor costs, outsourcing; who knows what other costs he is eyeing. That played out terrible for ge in the long term; however if you cashed in short term you made some good money.

This is starting to look like the cure is going to ki-l the patient. I have no doubt many of us will still be here at the end of the year. After that all bets are off, either people will retire at an accelerated rate or more targeted layoffs. AEP is the Titanic, I doubt we're going to make Port on time or in one piece.

Those employees and retirees, who labor and have labored diligently to create and sustain our company's, our states' and our nation's prosperity shall not be denied our virtuous destiny nor our noble legacy. Virtue-less tyrants and oligarchs, who swear allegiance only to themselves and their major shareholders' insatiable greed shall not subjugate our virtuous American Dream.

The destruction of AEP Generation continues with the pending loss of two of the very finest leaders, Chris Beam and Tim Kerns. Initially I had hoped with Julie's departure that the new senior leadership would build the company back up, but it now appears to just be the Draper Years Part II.

@4Dikp+1qB6FXi3

Generation Engineering? The Great Flattening of the Org seems to be starting the "Spans and Layers" plan in Generation and rolling it out across the company. HR seems to be struggling to create new roles for the demoted supervisors and managers. The timeline seems absolutely compressed to meet an unknown deadline regardless of how disruptive it is to the day-to-day operations.

Another thing for everyone to keep in mind, they are focusing on data security hard right now by revoking USB access to most of the people that previously had it. Additionally, they are asking Director levels to review and verify certain types of email attachments sent by their reports for "valid business reasons". So be mindful if you're working on resumes or backing up contacts for personal use.

Unfortunately, for many the damage is done. Employees are emotionally and intellectually exhausted and have no desire to play the corporate crony culture game any longer. Waiting for things to get better has proven futile as 31 flavors of clique management always winds up being cheap window dressing on the same sad and pathetic self-absorbed, as long as I am doing good sc--w the employees leadership paradigm.

@4Fdbi+1qB6FXi3 "growing pains" are you serious? She's been here for over 4 years. TCS is as bad today as they were the first day they came onboard. At some point changes in the Board or Bill will catch up with her. I just wish it would happen sooner than later.

Looks like I’m safe.

Fehrman cleaning house. Peggy and Beam both gone. I wonder why he hasn’t shed Therace yet. I think it’s fair to say that the board has endorsed her offshoring strategy for IT functions despite the growing pains.

How many managers to be demoted this week?
Many more managers and coordinators to be eliminated by weeks end?

One has to wonder, if some of these promotions allowed the company to receive higher COVID 19 Pandemic reimbursements from the federal government for keeping workers on the job because promoted employees had higher earnings. Now, that these promoted employees are no longer cash cows for the company they are being demoted back to their former positions because Pandemic assistance was great while it lasted.

I cant believe they want to fire me. Im doing such a good job and have been a real asset since I took over IT.

The Chief Administrative Officer's org is making changes currently.

What groups are making those changes? My leadership has been communicating the spans and layers is a suggestion….

I am so happy that I'm out of that place. What a sh it show for the past 4 years.

No layoffs in my department but layers of leadership being cut and managers/supervisors demoted so that our directors can have more direct reports. I get that AEP is top heavy, but let's take a look at the 90+ folks who are VP or above, or the managing directors, directors, and managers that don't have any direct reports. Its was such a wonderful feeling getting demoted today from manager role to a individual contributor because there's not enough folks on our team to meet Bill's 5-4-3-12 spans of control philosophy. And being told it is so those of us being demoted can focus on the day to day work....Im a working manager, I do day to day work and manage my folks on top of that. Was told that my role won't change except that I won't approve timesheets or do PMRs but yet I still have to lead, coach and mentor staff and be responsible for performance.

Thankful to still have a job but pi---d that frontline management is treated like this when we have way too many leaders above manager level - highly doubt any of them are being demoted because they're the ones making the decisions and are going to protect themselves instead of looking at efficiencies that make sense instead of playing a numbers game.

AEP's intrinsic value is its dedicated work force which has not shared in the financial success they are directly responsible for on a day-to-day basis. Leadership and shareholders reap all the rewards and employees do all the suffering and sacrificing. Working multiple days in high heat and humidity is dangerous and exhausting and employees see no appreciation for their dedication. Rising benefits costs, inadequate cost of living increases, rigged to fail ICP incentive program metrics and pitiful payouts are woefully inadequate and insulting. Self-absorbed leadership have neglected to address employee dissatisfaction and morale exhaustion. Without your dedicated long tenure employees your value is an illusion.

Bill is counting on us, guys.
Do it for Bill.

Hopefully not, but if the socialists win or steal the election look for mass fire sales of large portions of this company and many more like it. Like others said below, pensions and retirements may be stolen from the workers to maintain profits for the large shareholders.

If you don’t believe in the kickbacks, ask around about Optiv in cyber. 30-50% markup but management kept them for years. There’s a reason cyber used a different VAR than the rest of the company.