Variable Compensation Plan - Really Fair ?

Let's face it, the company success, its margin is less and less correlated to the employee success, and their variable compensation achievements.

Compensation gates introduced last year have been even more aggressive in this disconnection.

At the moment, lots of employees struggle to get the final numbers from scamea, but some have -- And they're very upset.

We propose to collectively share those numbers in order to have more ground in expressing our feedback to management.

Willing to join us  ?
Let's talk - Contact us on twitter @OracleCfdt.

Read More : HR-Works Do Variable Compensation Plan work ?

Territory Acceptance - Really Fair ?

The "acceptance" Oracle Management carterpillar has started moving towards a massive attempts to have all employees surrender to the FY19 T&C, Territories, Quota assignments.

This is a very rare moment where your management really expects you to be on time.

Large teams in France have entered into resistance on this process, once again call "acceptance", which has been confirmed as illegal.

CSM, Presales, CSR really have concerns about FY18 compensation. Why would they jump towards FY19 ?

And You, isn't it time for a real good conversation with your manager about the SMART model ?

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Fair Sales Management - How about the Uplift transparency ?

Uplift, did you say Uplift ?

This sales target processing has been implemented for years within Oracle and other companies (reference here)

This process ought to secure a manager's hierarchy achievements based on his team individual statistical unavailabilities (resignations,illness, maternity leave, deal conversion rates, dismissal...).

However, the increase in employee "rotation" and the pressure on sales achievements, generates an increase in the Uplift practice -- Leading to even more people leaving the company.

Let's have an example :

Peter C Sales VP receives a 300 M$ Quota.
He's eager to go to the excellence Club. He wants to fund a new dedicated sales Hunt group without impacting his P&L. He expects from this an additional cost of  30 M$ and chooses a 10% uplift for his regular sales teams.
He distributes 110 M$ to his 3 direct sales directors.
Viktor R, Sales Director, is a fair guy, he takes no uplift he distributes 110 M$ - No Uplift.
Brian M. Sales Manager receives 20 M$ - He knows he's got 2 people leaving, one pregnancy. He's quite unsure to have an approval for hiring in before some time. he over distributes quotas by 20%, so 24 M$ target to his team.
So an individual in Brian's team will receive 1.2*1*1.1 overquota distribution.

Going through those maths, you may overdistribute very quickly at a large scale, securing the company results and margin.

And what if a manager takes more than 20% uplift - Who knows, who checks, who claims ?

"Oracle Treats its employees fairly" - Shouldn't this be proven through transparency in the Compensation Systems ?
Shouldn't you ask the GIC teams ?

Should the FY19 T&C really be accepted  before having a serious discussion on what is a fair management practice ?

Oracle - The Right for Smart and Fair Compensation

The unfair compensation feeling from the sales/presales workforce is a growing movement  in multiple countries.

Watchout the following threads :

- US Class Action
- South Korea 3 days Strike action 
- France (Pool plans, 2017 Sales Achievements, Grievance Letter (English))

Gated pool plans, Clawbacks, replans, poor territory assignment, Universal Cloud Credits can help in sustaining the company margin, but leave the Employees in deep troubles regarding his own compensation.

The US Class action states "By reducing and withholding commissions in this fashion, Oracle’s commission policies and practices violated numerous California Labor Code requirements and caused damages of over $150 million to class members."

The Diving Save program is helping a very few number of employees getting a quick increase of their base salary. Few "Top Talents" are retained, when most of their collegues loose a large part of their variable compensation.

And how about you and your collegues ?  
Willing to share some info ?
Contact us on twitter @cfdtoracle

Firing Older workers -- only happening at IBM ?

You may find interesting to read this breaking news regarding IBM - A Grey Hair Exit Strategy ?

"AS IBM TRAINED ITS SIGHTS on younger workers, it also took steps to change the way it dealt with those who’d spent many years on the job. It embraced a legal strategy that made it much easier for the company to dismiss older workers, and to do so in ways that minimized legal consequences and largely avoided public attention."

The full article is here, from Propublica

Something that would never happen with Oracle ?
Or maybe this is already happening : Read this on thelayoff.com

Oracle Employee Voices Raising

Where can we find employee representatives within Oracle ?

European Union and its European Works Council, covering Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Solvakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK.
Most of those country are also running Local Works Councils, and can sustain the kick-off of new Local Works Councils.

The last EWC Annual Meeting Communique is available here. A new meeting will occur in March 2018.

Outside EU, we can find Employee representation in South Korea, and many other countries soon ?

Let's all agree there's much to do.

You want to build more organized employee feedback to management ?

Contact us on twitter - We're reactivating our English speaking line NOW !

Dev & MW RIF

As reported by the register, and multiple tweeter feeds, last week seems to have been final to few hundreds  employees in the Dev/MW Organisation.

Reports mention impacts on Java (with huge discussions again regarding the product strategy) , MW Products, Technical Writers positions. 

Well... Back a few days ago, the organization still reported 30800 Employees;

At the very same time, 10 Development VPs have also been impacted. Linked-in status shows some of them already acting in other companies (Verifone, Medallia). 
Others, now show "Open to opportunities". 
  Read More : Twitter, Officewall, tweet-cfdtoracle,

Oracle Software Support Chile - The End

 Friday Morning - An all hands meeting to announce this is the end of a 6 years story.

This support center had 120 employees, very professional and happy to help.
 62 of them have already joined the very new Ex Oracle Chile Facebook group.

We're very sorry for this, happening all of a sudden- You'll be missed.

Oracle Software Support in Chile ceased today

You will have problems finding an official annoucement regarding the end of this story.
The communication plan is tight, and all communications  have been secured by conference calls only.

However, you may see by yourself the numerous goodbye/farewell messages sent here.

Despite the very sudden announcement to the impacted employees, the goodbye messages are very kind, and positive about these past years. You'll appreciate this one : "Good luck with my SRs!!!"  

Good luck to you, dear collegues, and as you say "Hasta Pronto".

Comments are welcome below.

LuxLeaks - So many corporation secrets exposed

Tax avoidance has become such a well paid consulting opportunity !
Apple, Amazon, Ikea are been seriously blamed and, for the first time, may trigger a real change in Europe, now talking about Fraud, not just the near-legal-tax-optimization-game.  

We're talking here about a huge scandal, where Billions of Euros fly out of the country tax forks.

And what about Oracle on this ? Is the double irish schema working fine enough ?

 Oracle UK Results (Near Zero), Oracle France Tax Results (Negative),   ...  

Read More : UK 25% "Google" Tax,  PWC worried explainations Fraud or Optimisation ?,

Corporate tax policy transparency

Oracle France Works Council is entitled, once a year, to submit its questions to the subsidiary share holders.

We focused those questions this year on the tax optimisation process that may be of interest in many other countries - Read more here (Company Intranet).

Financial Dept interests, Global Contracts Pay backs, Tax Pay backs are some of the areas covered here.

Again - An other issue on fair revenue accounting from corporations.

Work@Home Agreement in France

Oracle France Labor unions have unanimously signed an agreement regarding Work from home.

This agreement brings the following considerations :
- The Work@Home request is initiated by the employee and the answer to the approval request is provided in a maximum of 30 days.
- The work contract is changed to allow 40 to 100% of Work@Home.
- Work@Home may be denied to an employee, but a written justification has to be provided.
- Work@Home can be cancelled by any party with a one month notive.
- Temporary Work@Home can also be allowed up to 11 months to cover special events (new born, broken leg, relocation, elder care...). 
- insurrance, and employee home office compliance is clarified.
- Office furniture may be purchased through iProc or by the employee up to a maximum of 350 Euros.
- Employee has to comply with any request for meetings by his management under a notification process commonly agreed with the manager.
- High Speed Internet is reimboursed under the general expense policy.
- A monthly allocation is provided to home workers to compensate energy & office occupation (2 days = 10 E, 3 days = 65 E, 4-5 days = 81 Euros).


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Forecast : A Prediction as of coming events or conditions

One of the essential managing skills, especially within Oracle is Forecasting. 

How come so few anticipation of change is shared with employees before things get to a critical point?

The EWC wrote in one of its recent opinion "This planning would help identify and highlight jobs at risk, allow for budgeting of training and enable the implemention of repositioning / re-skilling plans before reaching the point where job losses become a necessity."

The lack of social forcast seems to be a very common problem as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has made a formal complaint to the EU Ombudsman on the treatment of the EP’s report calling for legal action on the restructuring and anticipation of change (Read more).

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Offshore Leaks - Open Acccess to the database

From ICIJ - "The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists today releases an interactive database that helps crack open the historically impenetrable world of offshore tax havens. 

The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database allows the public to search through more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore."
The annoucement can be accessed here  - And The database is here 

You may download the 12 Mb Database just through this link...
Join us on twitter cfdtoracle

Offshore Profits - Oracle accounted for 21 Billion Unrepatriated

You may find interest in reading the detailled analysis from the  Citizens for Tax Justice Network.

 We do acknoledge Oracle is far behind Google (33 B$,), Cisco (41 B$), Microsoft (61 B$), and Apple (83 B$).
The Total unaccounted Income reaches 283 B$ for 18 Companies !

Aren't those numbers amazing and sickening ?

Dirty Little Secrets

A failure in enforcing anti corrupt practices has been uncovered and settled with a 2 Million dollars fine.

In the period 2005-2007, Oracle India Private Ltd used secret cash cushions and fake invoices that made bribery possible.

We still urge the company to move towards a more citizen approach and publish detailled accounts in each of its operating subsidiaries.

How many discrete companies do we still operate in haven islands ?

Who's insuring we do not conduct unauthorized operations there ?

Update 1 - Whisleblowing failures (The Gardian May 14th)

EWC Annual Meeting Communique

Following the Meeting with Management in March, you may consider our joint communique archived here (Oracle Intranet).

EWC Calling for "Employee Pain Points Presentations"

The European Works Council Representatives wishes to take  next annual meeting as an opportunity to collect organisational pain points and present them to EMEA Top Management.

Workflow processes, Self Service, Internal Competition - Any inappropriate process is welcome to try to figure out how we may improve Oracle Employee life.

Please contact your local employee representative, or one of the EWC steering commitee member (Peter R, Rashmi, Peter H, Mariarosa or myself).

HP's EWC taking the company to court

Is HP building its future in the HP Way ?

The huge HP reduction in force plan is not at all convincing employees.

A lawsuit has been filled by the European Works Council, willing to upgrade its rules of procedure to the EU 2009 level.

Read More... (ChannelRegister)

Power Union Website (Do not care the McAffee Site Advisor Warning)

Oracle EWC Training In Rome - An opportunity to draw the future of EMEA Employee relationship

The meeting held for 3 days in Roma is an opportunity for 23 EU Works Council reps to share their point of views and best practices in order to move forward, as a group,  for the coming years.

I do feel a lot of progress has been made in building trust with EMEA management and enhancing the way we share our concerns. We will strive to enhance the value of this body for both parties, and find better ways of informing all employees EMEA Wide.

Disclaimer - This statement represents the CFDT FR Delegate opinion. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the EWC Body.