Thread regarding Phillips 66 layoffs

Cutting costs by offshoring jobs is not a sustainable approach. There are more effective and intelligent ways to save money!

I think almost everyone knows and understands what the strategy is.
The problem is it’s a failed strategy not employees not understanding the strategy.

ok, a couple more.

9. Flexible work schedule is great for the employees who get to use it but it su-ks for everyone else. Lay some ground rules and follow them also, such as: Stop sending automated emails at all hours of the night, Do not allow teams messages to be sent after 5pm. Do not allow non-emergency emails to be sent after 6pm and before 7am.
10. I saw the report in the HR system. Start tracking badge access. You can't allow everyone to continue to work from home while others in similar roles don't feel like they can also. Stop telling people that 'based on their personal situation' they can work from home if their situation is not temporary. The rules for Thee and not for Me isn't working for morale. The email saying that a supervisor is supposed to verify the entire year of timesheets is ludicrous. Who knows what schedule anyone is on, how many hours they're working per day to adhere to said schedule, and when they're 'working from home'. Those following the rules are annoyed. It's a great policy for employees, it needs better boundaries and ground rules. It's like not giving your teenage kids a curfew and telling them to use their own judgement. The result is going to be to take it away from everyone because it just wasn't laid out and managed correctly from the start.

Due to the overwhelming negativity on this site, I've never posted here. I'm hoping this is truly a productive post of all the things you could say to the leadership team but don't have the guts to. -- Especially after calling out employees in the town hall for voicing their opinions. Sometimes it's obvious, but it helps to have a little bit of orientation - Midstream, 20+ years

1. Provide a truly anonymous method of providing feedback or voicing concerns. Your Glint survey isn't anonymous. As soon as an ethics complaint is filed, HR reaches out to the person who filed it and is notorious for divulging everything that was reported in their investigations. Provide a mailing address where anonymous paper letters can be sent... something. Until then, this is what you get.
2. Stop reading the script in the earnings calls Mark. If you're not reading, then figure out how to sound like you aren't.
3. Do not tell employees that 'their supervisor can help them understand' something until you prove that they understand it also... for example in the town hall you asked, "Who here doesn't understand the strategy?" in which nobody spoke up. Try this instead "Who here that is a FIRST line supervisor can explain the current corporate strategy for us?" -- my bet is you'd get the same response. Nobody has a clue what the strategy is because the last strategy that was CLEARLY COMMUNICATED was to build an integrated energy company and compete with XOM an BP in the areas of renewables, electricity, and other energy forms outside of Oil & Gas. See Steven Covey's story of how he handed off lawn-care responsibilities to his son without communicating expectations for help on this topic. This especially applies to HR. If you're expecting that things are being cascaded down through the organization - it's not happening. What is happening is a lot of buzzwords that have no true definition.
4. Mediocre is not exciting. Bare minimum is not something people can get behind. Nobody wants to be average. You're bleeding talented people because the only focus is to be average and cut costs.
5. When any level of management is speaking, close your eyes and imagine the words coming from a 6'4' 190# guy with a hardhat and a sneer on his face and ask yourself if it's still ok. Too many things are being allowed because of gender, stature, and previous culture. Rude and demeaning behavior is just that, even if it's coming out of a 4' 90# woman born in some other region of the world with a fake smile pasted on her face. It's not an excuse. There is no excuse.
6. Right now, the goal in midstream is not to ki-l anyone before year end. Will the goal next year to keep the death toll under 5? 10? Is something being done to address the culture allowing fires and near casualties to be acceptable? Midstream middle management has been stating that everything is on track. Perhaps some training on the "<" symbol is in order, or presenting their metrics in a way they can better understand.
7. Goals don't exist without strategy. Do away with the process all together. How does a small team not have enough people to have a full '2' ranking have enough people to require a '4' ranking. The 4 ranking carries with good employees and stagnates their career forever. This unfairness is noted and even good employees are leaving because of this unfair practice. You don't have merit raises anymore, so the whole thing should go - it can be a BT saving. Also, everyone talks about this and salaries, so if you think they're secret, you're wrong.
8. SRA's are not Christmas presents to be saved up and handed out equally to the masses in the form of an Amazon gift card at year end. Read your own policy and stick to it. You even put it on the monitors as a reminder to supervisors to spend their SRA budgets? How about award people for their contribution throughout the year?

I'm sure there's more, but I'm out of room.

1. Mark Lashier needs to project an air of confidence and articulate his vision for the future. Actual goals, like "Spend $×× capital on bringing our refineries up to date with technological advances by 2030." Stop flip flopping between our 3 big block investors and start leading them to the vision.
2. Reduce the number of ELT members. While employees were being cut, two new ELT positions were added.
3. Remaining ELT members need to get out the Executive Suite and mingle among the employees. Not carefully crafted sessions, just walk the floors and say hi. Shoe us you actually care.
4. Take a step back and really review Commercial' risk appetite. We have gone from a risk adverse to an overly risk taking position in 3 years ( almost anything goes to make a money). Do we really want to take on so much risk?
5. Stop trying to be in the middle of the pack of our competition and stop comparing us to tem. Be Phillips 66, be the best at what we

do.

6. Get everyone on one version of SAP. R3 support is minimal and it's getting harder to maintain. Especially when there is very little in-house knowlege now that so many IT folks were let go.
7. Stop downgrading key financial positions to save a few thousand dollars. The collective years of financial/operational knowledge that has been lost in the last 3 years leave the Company open to possible financial misstatements. No one wants that.
8. Remember that almost every employee is a shareholder.
9. Remember and live -- Honor, Safety and Commitment.

We need a project to look at the areas of the company where we have cut too much. This is an exercise to allow BU’s to put together a plan to show what $$ we generate by adding in various areas.

Cuts have been too dictatorial and deep in many places. An honest process to justify where we have opportunity by addition and not subtraction is a very valid exercise - and frankly the one we need.

Hire people that you trust have the capability to do the job, and let them do that job. Stop hiring consultants to do their job for them. It is a giant middle finger to internal SMEs to constantly favor the advice of consultants.

Some of the midstream tank project managers need to be gone. High salary, no technical skills, and doing nothing.

Clean house in the Legal Department and get attorneys that can appropriately manage litigation.

Hire competent leadership that adds true value, not just tick a box.

Who says there are no ideas? It seems to me that posters have put forth quite a few ideas as to how BT could have been executed way back when.
However, BT was shoved down our throats without asking for our input at the time. We were just told how it was going to be. My group was told to ask questions about BT would be putting a target on our backs.
So now that the ELT has made a big mess of things it's their bed to lie in.

So, no ideas?

9/80s or even 4/10s for facilities maintenance....nope! Too hard to manage or not enough manpower on Fridays. First off, management doesn't know who is here on the day to day anyway since they are spread so thin thanks to BT. Secondly, Fridays are a ghost town since the majority of P66 IS on their 9/80 or working from home.

TP (Jackson) came along from KPMG who had no knowledge of refining, midstream or chemicals and became CDO and couldn’t move a needle so far for anything good other than her dog a pony show for United way. Forgot to mention the disastrous SAP implementation at a cost of $1 billion which shows her lack of leadership. She will bring someone from KPMG as CIO. Sorry new dude QB, By the way I never understood why she got her (Jackson) in brackets. Is she not proud of her last name?

I share the same concerns about reorganizations, layoffs, and outsourcing of job functions. Employees shouldn’t have to live in constant fear that their careers could be upended once or twice a year due to a reorg. The stability and fulfillment they once found in their roles shouldn’t be abruptly taken away. If the goal is to retain talent, this cycle must end. It not only drives people to leave but also significantly harms workplace morale.

As a company, we can strive to do better. The values of "honor" and "commitment" seem to have faded.

Investors should be demanding an audit of BT. No matter how much it may seem like it sometimes, the ELT aren't id--ts, they know this isn't hitting the bottom line. Almost feels like wilful deception to be touting BT numbers to investors.

Completely agree about BT. Hilariously, Lashier Beams always quotes BT aggregate savings number like a triple audited, SOX-controlled finance metric. Meanwhile it’s actually the sum of hundreds of manually entered made up best guess savings in a spreadsheet. This is not a serious ELT. We are not a serious company.

BT savings being totally made up is what makes me doubt the future of the company more than anything. I don't know what sort of incentive system the RLT is getting for meeting BT targets, but any degree of scrutiny on the metrics is met with EXTREME resistance, so I'm guessing their bonuses are dependent on it. Have had numerous initiatives that I've shown with process and lab data that the benefits from trial runs were either non-existent, or much smaller than claimed, and universally, was told that we'll be sticking with the numbers out of Hysys because "it's a directional improvement."

If the ELT is wanting to understand what's going wrong, I'd HIGHLY suggest an independent audit of the BT savings.

BT savings are pie in the sky and never gonna hit bottom line. Look in wave and most of them are made up by managers who are then paid a bonus for pushing them through. Its embarrassing that ELT are too d-mb to see it.

RH should be fired for closing down the assets.

Stop lowballing good qualified internal candidates. That only increases the chance that unqualified people will apply for management positions.
Think about bringing back apprenticeship programs for maintenance positions.
Treat contractors with respect and kindness. I see times we try to save a nickel on labor just to realize it actually ran off talented people. It would appear due to misjudging different possibilities.
Give affordable health care to your employees. These deductibles are drastically reduce the money people make per year.
Stop surrounding yourself with yes men. You need to have someone on your team that tells like it is to ground your plans an ideas.
From the floor buisness transformation only hindered production.it appears to have slowed reliability and handcuffed maintenance. Everyone is trying to save a dollar. Usually leads to a massive failure then costs what appears to be more money. Thank god no one has died at the hands of these poor decisions.

We need the ability to add staff if there is an opportunity for clear savings from adding. The way we have cut was appropriate in many cases, in others, it went too far and put the company in a bad spot. They should be open to the opportunity within to add and do more where we prove it makes sense

Invest in reliability and staff with people experienced who know how to get there

Keep the main gate closed to the pants. Sell Stoney

"Layoffs and outsourcing should be an absolute last resort. Those who make the decision to send jobs overseas should take a mandatory SGL decrease."

Garland one year didn't take his bonus because of how we performed by choice. Told the board to not award his. That went a long way. If ICs are taking pay cuts to keep their job, it would be good for those up top to do the same. Their compensated in other ways that makes up the difference anyway.

Layoffs and outsourcing should be an absolute last resort. Those who make the decision to send jobs overseas should take a mandatory SGL decrease.

Operate with the mentality that we will be the last refiner standing.