Well this makes no sense...

I asked my manager why so many reps with award winning histories bad been laid off. She said that so many in leadership thought they were difficult to direct and manage. They wanted people that would follow the plan from leadership. I couldn't believe it! Let's cut the successful people and keep the people that will just follow the herd off the cliff. You can't make good leaders out of a follower mentality. That explains why Sanofi is struggling to launch drugs and compete. This must change!

 

Either your manager is dumber than a box of rocks or she is lying straight to your face. There was no reason other than zip codes as to why reps were laid off. This was confirmed by numerous abls and rbls. And that's why the company is a dumpster fire.

 

None of the ABLs or RBLs are provided with the business rules for layoffs. There are only a handful of people in HR and Senior Management that know the business rules.

 

Anyone with half a brain could see the cuts were based on where you lived

 

^^^^^^ Truth teller ^^^^^^

 

Not when more tenured reps with more success are cut in the same cities as less tenured and less successful. There is manager and leadership input. They cant admit that because they would open themselves to a lawsuit.

 

^^ dummy^^

 

There is ZERO input from the ABL during the process. Previous year-end review ratings are factored in as a criteria, but nobody comes to a manager asking for their input before the layoffs. The ABLs receive a file from their RBL the same morning of the day they make the calls. That is all.

 

My people, my people, why do you ignore the obvious? Award-winning reps tend to have higher salaries, right? In many cases, they also have more tenure than their "lower-ranked" counterparts. Ya see it, yet? I've been here since 2008, and won pretty much every award that there is to win. The overwhelming majority of people that were fellow-award winners were cut between our first clipping in 2009 up to about 2 years ago. Its easy to see the strategy: the industry poo-bahs believe that with poor access and little real face time in front of customers, we dont need a bunch of award-winners out there, anymore.

In their view, a tiny crew of sample dropping, lunch catering messengers (average age of 37) showing up in each docs office 4 times a month is about as effective as a crew of Hall of Fame-caliber Aventis sales monsters (average age of 47). Throw in a rep-for-hire field force or two, and now we're talking saving real money! Money, not coincidentally, that will be used for you know who to hire or keep more of his fellow Novartis rejects, or open up new departments and then (drum roll).... staff the departments with Novartis rejects.

This is how it works, kids. Check with your former colleagues at Novo. Ask them about their little guy that surrounded himself with inept sycophants from his former company.

 

It was based on zips.

 

Based on the funneling of this company...can't successfully buy other companies, can't successfully launch products, can't keep leader for any length of time, do you honestly not think that the Sanofi way isn't the best way???? If you stop drinking the kool-aid for a minute, you will see that the decisions being made are awful.

 

You said award winning and Sanofi in the same sentence? Kinda like being the tallest midget. Everyone at Sanofi is a mental midget.

 

I was not involved in this round of layoffs but I am in HR and have been involved in previous displacements.

I can assure you that ABL and RBL's have zero input in the process. The entire exercise is to reduce expenses and protect the company from litigation. Your performance was not taken into account. Sanofi utilizes a third party to insure that people from protected categories are not adversely impacted thus protecting the company.

Here is another nugget, your performance is irrelevant. This or any other pharma company will never terminate anyone for performance. Performance will never be a metric in any career decisions that are made. There is not a method to measure performance in the pharmaceutical industry. Legal would never ever ever defend the performance data in a litigious environment. That data is deeply flawed and we know it. There are many other "safer" methods to terminate someone.

 

Now you understand why numbers and bonuses suck- "cooking the books". You work for a French company- they are the best cooks in the world!

 

Current novo rep here. That little guy you are referring to is known as Napoleon. He's an egomaniac that talks from both sides of his mouth. He is an inept leader. Novo is fast becoming a sesspool of dispair.

 

At least they are not an unemployed mental midget like you.

 

Hardie har har
I know you are, but what am I?
So that makes you a Sanofi employed mental midget.

 

Corrected for accuracy.

 

This person is funny. Funny and smart. You other people saying stupid things are neither.

 

I too have intimately been involved with the decision process during a major restructuring (not at Sanofi but an industry competitor of similar size). The quote above sounds exactly like the process we went through where an outside consulting firm came in and asked "what does this position do" for everybody in the organization, and then identified the ones we could do without. If you were in one of those positions, you were gone. No names were used, no ages, no gender, no salaries considered (other than the official compensation band for that position). It was truly blinded. Legal came in after the preliminaries to insure that protected classes were not adversely impacted and a few tweaks were made but that was it.

In one group we had four management training slots and the four candidates would rotate jobs every six months for a two year period. In the candidate pool we had one person widely recognized as a superstar, one who was clearly a dud, and two average performers. Two weeks before the reorg happened it was time to rotate the candidates. The superstar rotated into (and the dud rotated out of) the position that was identified to be cut. Goodbye Mr. Superstar, Mr. Dud was declared safe.