The Yell Situation

Someone in the office obviously has a hotline to the BBC...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7723208.stm

The situation is that there are upto 350 redundancies planned, with "the vast majority" coming from the offices in Slough and Reading. it was announced in a company-wide series of meetings today. Quite obviously the IT department is in Reading, and by our (my which I mean my teams) estimates we are 200 of about 1500-1800 in those offices, which would indicate about 15-20% headcount reduction. Alongside this there will be a closer focus on a reduced number of projects.

We are going to enter a period of consultation (apparently legally required given the numbers involved), however they want to let those affected know before Christmas if all goes according to plan. Those people will normally have the option of voluntary redundancy, or redeployment within the business (good luck with that, unless you suddenly show an aptitude for sales). The aim is to have the reductions in place before the end of the financial year.

As there has to be this consultation bullshit (which almost certainly won't change anything... Yell tend to be fairly good at keeping on the right side of people when doing redundancy) actual numbers are not known yet, and what will happen over the next 2 months is wild and rampant speculation and guesswork. My personal opinion is that the IT department will take about 40-60 casualities, of which about half will be volunteers (those close to retirement...off the top of my head I can name about 10 people in that situation already). I can name another 10-15 people who I would expect to go as they are dead weight.

So there you go...there are a fair few people here who are going to get caught up in this (Simpson, Skunty, James and myself). For my part I'm not excessively concerned...I work in a reasonably key area (payment, collection and billing), and I'm not duplicated, however it would be remiss and stupidly arrogant of me not to clean up the CV, and start checking the websites to get an idea for the job market. A quick scan tonight confirms that I can advertise myself as a Business/Project Analyst and keep a straight face, and that at least is good news.

Also, and possibly more excitingly, I've been given the chance to be a fire marshall! Having the chance to spend a day letting off fire extinguishers excites me no end...

Comments

Well that's shitty news. You definitely are a BA, mate and there is always a need for good BAs. We need some too.

brainwipe's picture

I think I saw your place advertising last night...is this them?

babychaos's picture

Nope but it could be!

They provide web-based business systems primarily for the housing market

We're in finance, Tech Track 100 two years running.

brainwipe's picture

At this point my plan is to get the CV upto date. There are plenty of jobs out there in the Accounts Payable/ FI sector, and some advertising scary money, so if my name comes out of the hat there are certainly routes I can take...

babychaos's picture

I think I am reasonably likely to be hit by this round, given that it is common knowledge that my day job mostly leaves me stuck for something to do a lot of the time. I may even opt to do it out of choice... I have options and I need to think about them in some detail.

Other than that not much to add to what Pete has already said! We live in interesting times.

Nibbles's picture

Bad luck guys. Good luck for getting something good out of it!

I think consultation is 90 days of you asking questions and suggesting ways to not get the chop before they do it anyway.

But that's just my experiance of it.

I was officially told I am redundant today. Onward and upward we hope.

baron's picture

That seems to have shot by. Do you get a decent package?

I think Yell are planning on getting the consultancy over a fair bit quicker than 90 days. If they haven't let people know by Christmas I'll be surprised...

babychaos's picture

90 is the legal requirement if it's more than 100 people at the same location. 30 otherwise, iirc.

AggroBoy's picture

I think 90 days is the maximum time they can allow, however I doubt there is going to be a huge amount of discussion, and in all honesty they probably already know who is going... I expect that it will be pushed through as fast as possible, I can't imagine anyone wanting to wait 3 months just to know...

babychaos's picture

No - 90 is the legal minimum for more than 100 people, I'm certain of that. It's to protect the workforce and allow them time to consider their options and find alternative employment. Having said that, they can unofficially have already decided, provided they go through the motions. When Sun closed their UK R&D down they told us on day one that we were all going, but that we'd still have the 90 days consultation and that we should enjoy the three months garden leave. I can imagine Yell doing something similar if they want to get things pushed through quickly.

AggroBoy's picture

They expect people to have gone by end of March, and plan to let us know who is at risk before Christmas.

The consultation is being done initially with union reps for the vast majority (even those of us not members of a union are still being represented that way), and a couple of employee reps. As such I can see both sides agreeing quite quickly to the plans.

babychaos's picture

Ahh the technical get out is upto 90 days. They can stop it when they feel all relevent and new questions have been answered. With the practice our lot have had that turned into about 5 weeks.

Our consultation started on the 1st October, which means things would have finished in the middle of the xmas break. To they're credit, they're making sure that the whole process doesn't finish before the 90 days (that migth actually be legal). People that have filled in forms find out if they have a job or not by the 15th of Dec.

Everyone gets to then appeal and formal "you're out the door" is on the 7th of Jan. 5 days later people can start gardening leave.

Even though I have asked for it, I don't get made redundant until the 7th of Jan, which gives me a bit more time to find something than my 1 months notice would normally allow. The 14th of Jan (day after my bday) is my last day.

We think there's some budget stuff going on, because other departments that were put at risk after us are being brought into line with us. The 14th of Jan will be the last day for a lots of people.

Depending on how much your HR dept actually care, then asking good questions once a week or so can stretch out the consultation period. Then again, you could just get answers that don't actually answer what you asked, becuase they have a deadline they want to work to. But that would never happen... right?

baron's picture

Sorry, I started typing all that ages ago, but took a while.

baron's picture

In a way its good to have you trail-blazing for us Baron... your updates here have meant that all the stuff being told us now is fairly expected, and inline with your experiences. We are both in a similar situation where we have been working for a large-name company for a long time...

babychaos's picture

Glad to be of help :-)

Yeah, I've been here 12 years now. (12 years and one day to be exact...)

My main bit of advice is an obvious one, but it took a little bit of a mindset change within myself.

"Think of number one"

I'd been used to trying to do well at work, which normally means doing well for the company AND yourself. It's my normal work ethic of doing as well as I can.

In times like this the company doing well at work no longer neccessarily means you're doing well for yourself any more.

I'm not saying be a cunt or burn your bridges, but it's a subtle change to focus on yourself and not your work. It's a change that has allowed me to assess things objectively and let me make a decision different to, "I really need to work hard on my form to do the best here".

My second piece of advice is along the same lines.

"Don't trust them"

The company will be far better at thinking about itself. They will do tings when they want to do things. Consultation is not negotiation. Certainly not in our case as there is no union really. Even though you may make a fantastic suggestion that stops lots of people getting the sack, they can and probably will ignore you.

I'll stop being cynical now and get back to job hunting.

baron's picture

Ahh the technical get out is upto 90 days

Well, it depends what you mean by consultation. The consultation period is 90 days, which just means that employees have to be notified their position is at risk at least 90 days before any notice of redundancy can be issued (assuming at least 100 people are affected.) The actual consultation (as in, the employer actually talking to their staff,) can be much shorter than that, and in my experience (having been made redundant four times now) is pretty much non-existent because...

Consultation is not negotiation.

Absolutely true. I wouldn't expect any large company to go into an expensive process like this without knowing exactly what they're planning to do before they let a hint of it get to the employees. This isn't really as bad as it sounds though since it's usually in everybody's best interests if all the decisions are made as soon as possible; it gives people longer to work on their CV and find another job. Also many companies don't force you to keep working once they've decided you're redundant, meaning you get the remainder of the consultation period paid garden leave. I was lucky (last time,) when Sun closed UK R&D they told us on day one that we were all going, and that we should enjoy our 90 days (plus notice, which they didn't have to give us.)

AggroBoy's picture

We have a company-wide announcement at 11am today, which probably signals the end of "consultation". We've already been advised that At Risk people will start to be advised today as well...

We, quite naturally, are organising pie for immediately afterwards. It's the only decent thing to do!

babychaos's picture

Absolutely on the pie. Good luck YP chaps!

brainwipe's picture

The old office is well weird place to be atm... Like some kinda desolate wasteland where we are expecting the remaining people to be herded up into a brave new no fucking job world.

Roll on 11:00.

Nibbles's picture

Have they moved out all the people who are likely to be keeping their jobs into a new building? Are they just going to demolish the old one with you chaps in it? Harsh!

brainwipe's picture

The numbers are in...we are losing 67 from IS, from a rough headcount of 200.

Not sure on other peeps numbers, but my team is losing 4 from 19. We got off reasonably lightly...

babychaos's picture

8 from 22 bit more of an axe coming down in my area.

Other peoples from the board Skunty 1 from quite a few. James Markun's lot will be losing 4 from 10.

Nibbles's picture

Crikey, it's like some terrible lottery. :(

brainwipe's picture

We had many recommendations along those lines...a Tombola and Musical Chairs were also mooted as potential tie-breaker situations.

babychaos's picture

gladiatorial combat

two people enter one person leaves ... then a bit later the other person leaves in a bucket

Evilmatt's picture

Skunty is safe, confirmed.

I still think we should have had a conga line leaving the meeting. What an image!

Nibbles's picture

Regardless of what happens, I think the default is that Aggroboy wins?

brainwipe's picture

Just had my update, still at risk. There is a technical issue with the letters...

babychaos's picture

I am safe.

Nibbles's picture

Congrats Nibbles :), bad luck Pete. :(

brainwipe's picture

As per Twitter, I was informed yesterday that I'm not in this round of redundancies. From our team of 18 we lost 5, all of them volunteers.

I was umm'ing and ahh'ing for a while, as my offer was fairly large (take home would have been about 18 months wages), however the job market would require me to work in London if I wanted to keep at the same level. I had a sit-down with the departmental manager, as a couple of other issues had come up regarding my bonus (basically it turned out my wages had been set so that I was a pittance below a much larger bonus percentage, while others on the same role were just over). He agreed that this was daft, and an administrational error, and spent the time to sort it when he was also daftly busy with the redundancy paperwork. I took the opportunity to vent about some other frustrations with the department, and we agreed there was too much hangover from the civil service business structure...something he is keen to sort out, as it generates un-nessecery bullshit paperwork.

It looks like generally across the company there were enough volunteers that no-one has been forced into redundancy (with some exceptions, which were fairly obvious to most people). Indeed, there are more people annoyed that they didn't get VR when they applied for it. That said, general opinion is that there will be more to come...

babychaos's picture

There are some interesting things that happened yesterday. For example James' team... Team of 5 + 1 manager. Expected redundancies 2, which is what happened, in the morning.

In the afternoon they found out that the person on secondment would be being sent back to the business meaning James new team structure is 2 + 1 manager. Oddly one of the people that is going doesn't want to and the person that is staying wants to go.

Odd.

Nibbles's picture

Pete, thrilled that you got what you wanted. You are being paid for your corporate knowledge and skill base, which is great.

Chris, those weirdnesses often happen. It depends on pay grade and all that.

brainwipe's picture

Specifically in James's team there is one chap (bless his cotton socks) who is a complete waste of space. He has been through redundancy once, and is only on the team due to the archaic rules that allow people to hang around and stuff envelopes until being dumped on a team with a vacancy.

Harsh, but if I was running the team he would have been top of the list, and I doubt many people would disagree with that for once...

babychaos's picture

He'd have been second on mine... There's still the potential for a "bumping" apparently.

Nibbles's picture

He's a different grade to everyone else, I don't think his chances are very good at all.

Just spoken to James...sounds like his area went through a much more targetted cull than elsewhere.

babychaos's picture

It seems to be that way, there's *something* going on with the managers as well. From what we tell (and this is speculative at best) 2 of them are going, neither of them want to and both are sharpening their sticks in order to fight the power so to speak.

Nibbles's picture

Perhaps some kind of cage fight is in order, where people fight for their jobs. Given the stunning physiques of some of the affected people the outcome could be pure hilarity...

babychaos's picture