It shouldn't be a surprise. New CEO. New vision. Massive layoffs. HP CEO Meg Whitman on Wednesday began making her mark on the company with an outline for a multiyear "productivity initiative" designed to simplify business processes, advance innovation and deliver better results for shareholders.
Whitman expects her plan to save Hewlett-Packard $3 billion to $3.5 billion by 2014, the majority of which will be reinvested back into the company. HP is targeting three areas of strategic focus for its reinvestment: cloud  , big data and security.
"These initiatives build upon our recent organizational realignment, and will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business," Whitman said. "While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long-term health of the company.
"We are setting HP on a path to extend our global leadership and deliver the greatest value to customers and shareholders."
A Whitman Misstep?
Whitman mentioned job losses. HP plans to slash 27,000 jobs as part of its restructuring. As of Oct. 31, 2011, that represents 8 percent of the company's workforce . Those layoffs will occur between now and the end of 2014.
We touched base with Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, to discuss the layoffs and his views on whether it's enough to right the HP ship. He told us it's not unusual for a new CEO to order a major downsizing.
"The rule of thumb is to not only make layoffs big and early in your term, but also to make it fast," Enderle said. "You don't want people worried about their job for any extended period of time and you don't want them to leave. If they do know they are going to be laid off, that can do horrible things to morale."
As Enderle sees it, Whitman got two of the three rules right: she announced massive layoffs, and early in her tenure. But, Enderle noted, she isn't executing the layoffs quickly. In his experience watching tech companies over the years, Whitman may not have moved fast enough.
"Often when you do big layoffs slow, they can do so much damage during the period of time that they are active that you are forced to do subsequent lay offs and it's very hard to pull a company out of a spiral," Enderle said. "That's sort of where Carly Fiorina got stuck." (continued...)
EX-HP BUYER:
Posted: 2012-05-25 @ 9:48am PT
We will no longer buy HP products.
DadsHouseEdCtr:
Posted: 2012-05-24 @ 5:31pm PT
Letter to the Meg Whitman, HP CEO
From: George McCasland
Date: Wed, May 23, 2012 at 6:33 PM
Subject: Announced Layoffs
To: Meg Whitman <*******@hp.com>
Dear Ms. Whitman,
Dads House has free information that will be needed by many of those facing a layoff from your company.
I would like to suggest that HP send out a notification to all those people being laid off that if they have a child support obligation, they can get help from their state to have the order modified. That they need to make the official request the moment they have been notified they are listed for release, as it can take up to a year to get a hearing.
This is a right they have under the 1988 Child Support Enforcement Act, and is detailed in the Federal Child Support Enforcement Handbook for Non-Custodial Parents. Unfortunately, the states refuse to distribute the handbook, which is free from the feds. Here is the material from it.
http://ChildSupportRights.org
If you are willing, here is a small poster that can be displayed in the employee break rooms with the above link.
http://dadshousedocs.org/ChildSupportRightsAD.pdf
I hope you will consider my request, and perhaps have one of your assitants respond to confirm you have received it. You are experiencing some public relations issues right now with this decision, and this might help it.
George R. McCasland, National Moderator
Dads House Educational Center & Groups
http://DadsHouseEdCtr.org
Postscript:
Took me a while to find a contact address, and I cc'd it to their Craig Gomez, Media Relations VP, as a backup.
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