Company announcement, what could it be?

[bluebag27]

In your experiences, when you have been told there is a company announcement, what has it turned out to be?

I'm currently off work, but have been told there is an announcement tomorrow and that I must attend unless it's absolutely impossible that I can't.

My first thought is redundancies. What else could it be?

Usually corresponding grades will be matched and become standardised over time or you may be tuped to new company on same terms which are protected for a period .

This might help

https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/tupe-factsheet/#:~:text=When%20a%20business%20moves%20to,they%20had%20before%20the%20transfer.

TUPE can be very beneficial. I've been TUPE'd twice and ended up better off each time. And of course you can't end up worse off.

You don't need a union TUPE will apply, salaries can't randomly be reduced

Have they mentioned efficiencies? Sometimes that comes a little later.

No, what is that?

With a merger they'll often look reducing the headcount, by removing duplication of roles etc.

I have experienced this for restructuring, senior management change, to talk to everyone about a scandal (ceo under investigation for a crime) or incident (we were all briught together after london riots, grenfell etc) and a rather random one where we were all call together for a senior manager to announce her pregnancy.

We had whole departments had to reapply for their own jobs. Some didn't get them, departments were then merged.

The heads that rolled were at the top end, which wasn't all bad. The lower end were mostly kept on. But this didn't happen all at once.

I'd think job losses. Only time I ever had a meeting request of the kind the OP refers to other than that was in March 2020, when we started working from home two weeks before the former Prime Minister woke up and acted.

Based on my recent experiences, if you've all recently been through "best practice workflows" training then it's a restructure/redundancies so less of you end up with more work 😢

Yes.

If your role is made redundant but there are other suitable vacancies then these must be offered to you on not worse terms and conditions (at least the same pay and hours).

Even if there are better qualified candidates- you get first dibs.

You should not be required to have to apply or interview.

Also if you have any perks, benefits, pension, life assurance and they want to change your contract check everything remains the same or at least isn't worse.

Good it's a merger rather than redundancies.

My boss phoned me when I was on maternity to tell me we'd been bought by a bigger firm (I couldn't go into the meeting). It was brilliant, they invested lots and the company expanded.

Other extraordinary company wide meetings I've been at over my career: company being split into two parts to avoid a take over, a change of CEO, redundancies. Most companies of a decent size will have regular company wide meetings though.

It may also be a major rebranding of the company . If there are many sectors in the company e.g healthcare , IT, security all bundled in one etc it may be a breakaway from the parent company. Even launching on the stock exchange. Good luck

In my experience, all these things have been announced at mysterious all-staff announcement meetings .

Job losses
Restructuring
Office closing
Moving office
Someone's died
Lost a big contract

Date for the Xmas party?

unless structured in an unusual way, mergers are not normally TUPEs. You're still employed by the same company, but that company has either been taken over or has bought another company. This doesn't mean you can't be made redundant, of course, but your employment contract remains the same.

OP, you really just need to attend the meetings and ask these questions then. Asking people here about hypotheticals based on speculation isn’t going to help you.

If it’s an announcement about redundancies or a merger or a takeover or a restructure, the senior staff will have been briefed on all this and will be prepared for you to ask these questions. I’m guessing that’s what the smaller meetings might be for. But for now, try not to worry and just wait until you actually know what’s happening before you figure out the questions you need to ask.

I know it’s stressful, but don’t jump to conclusions - best of luck and fingers crossed for you.

Redundancies
Change in Ownership
Fundamental change in structure (see point 1)
Merger
Floating on SE

..just saw your note on smaller meetings..

...thats very redundancies-esque im sorry to say

It should all be covered under the TUPE process and is very fair on the employees side.

She's been to the meeting, it's a merger - her reply about it is on the first page...

At H’s company it meant they had calked in the receivers as the company was going into liquidation

I was going to say merger and happy to be correct 😁

Happened at my last company - some very quiet redundancies did follow in the next 12m or so, but only in the 'enabling' teams as nobody needs 2 x HR, 2 x Comms 2 x finance etc. but the sites were left to it, as were teams with specific operational knowledge. Overall it was a plus for the business.

I also got a Tesco colleague clubcard which was ace.

Ours was that they’d sold the company to another business.