I am the spouse of a recently severed Novo Nordisk employee. I won't even get started on the process and lack of logic behind the decision or how the paperwork only arrived today, many days after the final day of employment. If the axing of employees would have been based on performance, KPIs, and deep relationships in the field, or access to no-access, high-volume targets, my spouse would still be employed. It was not.
I could go on forever about the above, but if you are in the same boat as my spouse, you know exactly how we feel. And it comes as no surprise the awkward smiling Cheshire Cat HR Executive was forced to walk the plank for Novo, a token Executive sacrifice for a botched and inhumane restructuring. Maybe Novo will have Sting sing her a song or two as she rides her golden parachute to even greater fields of gold. Think about the absurdity. She gets to add a mammoth restructuring to her resume, and someone will hire her for it. Sickening.
Sorry, I got side-tracked. The package. Yes, it arrived today, and I was stopped on page 1 with questions. Just so many questions, questioning all over the place. Remember that vacation time you weren't allowed to take, so you ended up with three weeks unused, maybe more, maybe less. You must have some. Remember how they told you to take it in November and December, when they had already forced you out of the field? Well? Yeah, it's gone. All of it. You won't see a penny due to the slinky maneuvering of the plank walker mentioned in paragraph two of this post. I was fascinated by paragraph 3, line five, of page 1 of the package. It clearly states you are signing to attest you received and have been paid "unused accrued paid time off." What they have done is so monumentally rotten here. Take a breath, a few maybe, then call HR to ask them to explain to why they are asking you to effectively lie by signing this statement. You didn't use your vacation because first, you were told not to take it during the shutdown, then you were told to take it in November and December when you were kept out of the field. It doesn't make sense, that is, until you give them a call.
Okay, you might not want to call, but you should. Every single one of you should call. Clog the phone lines, fill their email. It's spectacularly vicious how they have screwed you out of your careers, and now, to pour salt in the wound (as the plank walker licks her paws), they weaseled you out of unused vacation time. You see, you were employed through January 4, 2021 and you can only role over so many days (but those five days aren't even added to my spouses severance dollar amount). And, what other changes have been made? Well, now, there is no minimum or maximum cap on PTO. January 4th is in 2021, you effectively have no 'actual' accrued vacation time, so you receive nothing. You do not even reveive what you did not use last year. Don't believe it? Check your paystub from January 8, 2021. Look at PTO carefully. It is "uncapped."
Brilliant, no?
Best of luck to all of you in 2021. If Novo offers to hire you back, personally, I'd run the other way. If it wasn't for diabetics, they wouldn't be in business. If you know Type 1 diabetics, talk to them about Lilly. For type 2, especially early stage, a whole foods diet is much less expensive than a GLP-1.
P.S.: In full disclosure, my spouse did not ask me to write this, but I felt I had not choice.
