Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

Yes, It’s common for businesses to replace high-paid, long-term employees with newer hires who have less experience and lower salary expectations. These newer employees are often less jaded by corporate, have fewer established boundaries, and are more likely to prioritize their careers over personal or family life.

We're not reducing headcount though. We're hiring.

There may be some tax benefits for the company, but to me, this is more about preserving traditional, “old school” corporate power and control—plain and simple. I also suspect there’s an interest in reducing headcount without offering layoff packages. As corporations push to restore the status quo, perhaps this is a moment for people to reconsider what really matters. We’ve had a taste of a new kind of work-life balance. Scaling back our lifestyles could mean needing less income, which in turn could open up more choices, greater freedom, and a better overall quality of life.

It’s a myth that most major companies are going full RTO. Less than 10% of all companies with more than 1,000 employees have a full 5 day on office policy.

It’s just not as big a deal publicly when companies adopt hybrid models.

5 days of RTO is NOT the norm with Fortune 500 companies according to Grok:

Are most Fortune 500 companies mandating RTO policies?
"Most Fortune 500 companies are not mandating full return-to-office (RTO) policies but are instead favoring hybrid models. According to a February 2025 report, 86% of Fortune 100 companies have adopted hybrid work arrangements, where employees split time between working from home and the office, typically expecting 1–5 days per week in the office. Only 19 Fortune 500 companies (4%) require a full five-day in-office presence, while 40 (8%) have fully remote policies. The trend leans toward structured hybrid schedules, with 43% of U.S. companies overall adopting such models by late 2024, and the average office attendance requirement is around 2.78 days per week. High-profile companies like Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Nike have pushed for at least four-day in-office policies, but these are exceptions rather than the norm. Employee satisfaction with hybrid arrangements is high, with nearly 80% of workers in hybrid or in-person models reporting satisfaction, compared to 90% for fully remote workers."

The driver is clearly market forces, if it was just "old school mentality" then you would see more variance among top companies.
Badge tracking doesn't give you any insight into why the decision was made, all it does is tell you that they are serious about it.

Good discussion here but I think something needs to be clarified. I do not believe taxes or commercial real estate are the drivers here. It really and truly is control and an old school leadership mentality.

I say this because multiple executives have pushed for badge tracking to verify employees are coming in to facilities. This has been discussed for hybrid workers, even before the RTO decision.

That should be clarifying, in terms of how many executives at this iteration of AEP view this situation. I was privy to discussions around how this would potentially be implemented.

Happy Easter to all of my best friends at work (that’s all of you). Whether or not you celebrate, I hope you have a great day and can push off the “Sunday Scaries” until late tonight.

If you want a successful careers at AEP, lower your standards

A lot of the smaller companies continue to offer hybrid flexibility while Fortune 500s go full RTO. Maybe the smaller companies see it as an inexpensive card they can play to attract talent away from larger companies.
But if this was really about commercial real estate, isn't this the exact opposite of what you'd expect to see? Wouldn't you expect the larger companies to have the capital to own their buildings outright and be above the influence of landlords, while smaller companies have to RTO?

A lot of other utilities offer hybrid across the country.

My money would be on the commercial real estate owners are giving some breaks to get people back in the buildings. If I remember right, $1.5T mortgages were coming due in 2025 to be refinanced. With higher interest rates and low occupancy, not sure a worse scenario for them. Maybe it's a way for the companies to bail them out.

I think whatever is driving the RTO is bigger than just Bill.
If it was just Bill then you wouldn't see the same pattern happening at all these major companies. I don't know what it is or what is causing it, but it isn't specific to just AEP and one man's whimsy. There's been speculation that it's about propping up commercial real estate values or that major companies are getting some kind of deal from municipalities to make employees RTO to prop up downstream businesses like restaurants. But those seem kind of weak to me and I really don't know what it is.

I wonder how many people find in-office the least productive days. For me, that’s true. I’m remote but have gone in about once a week on average. I get far less done on those days (which I could care less about). At home, I barely leave me office all day except for bio breaks and to make lunch which I eat at my desk. Much of my day is on Teams. Bill’s view of the corporate world is that of a too old and too out of touch executive. If I see him at the office I’ll call him Bob. He’s a generic characterization of a 1970s executive with a lazy eye. So Bob is more generic than Bill and it fits.

Successful change management typically involves clear communication, phased implementation, and giving people time to adapt.

Too many changes to an organization too fast can lead to several negative outcomes, including:

1. Employee Resistance: People generally resist change, especially when it’s rapid and frequent. It can create fear, uncertainty, and pushback.
2. Decreased Morale: Constant change can make employees feel unstable or undervalued, leading to lower motivation and morale.
3. Confusion and Chaos: If changes aren’t clearly communicated or implemented gradually, it can lead to confusion about roles, processes, and priorities.
4. Burnout: Employees may feel overwhelmed by having to constantly adapt, which can lead to stress and burnout.
5. Loss of Productivity: Frequent shifts in direction can interrupt workflow, training, and performance, slowing down progress.
6. Diluted Focus: Making too many changes can cause the organization to lose sight of its core mission or long-term goals.
7. Increased Turnover: If employees are unhappy or uncertain about the future, they may leave the organization.

By their nature, ERGs are not inclusive, they have a limiting scope to a small subset of employees. Example, the Veterans RG, if you're not a veteran, why would you join but I guess anyone is allowed to join just don't say you were when you're not. Kinda like saying you're a native American when you're not for that ERG. I'm sorry Bill not everything has to be inclusive. It's why the Boy Scouts are no longer the BSA because they let girls in just to drive up the membership numbers. Nothing wrong with being restrictive on membership. Just something else the company touches that turns to sh....

How will you measure leadership accountability? High turnover rates? From my experience leadership at AEP is full of retaliation, make a complaint and you are done. This is why the surveys never worked. That retailiation mentality has always been there.

so, the ERGs will still exist except they won’t be promoted like before. Bill is implementing what’s called “Inclusion” that has three principles: leadership accountability, inclusive workplace and community wellbeing. The ERGs fall under this new program.

Is it true all the ERG’s are being eliminated?

I still haven’t heard if there will be any actual changes that matter in engineering. Is it even going to impact distribution? Maybe missed a comment or something but I don’t see anything major.

I left because I was unhappy and took a small pay cut. I’m glad to not be involved with the company any more. New job still pi---s me off but everything about it other than pay is better. I do miss making a little more money. Oh well. Might have been worth it.

Deny the accomplishments of those employees, who have weighed and measured you as their leader and found you wanting.

Abandon the past to have no measure of future success or abysmal failure by comparison.

Erase the AEP history because it shines the blinding light of truth on the fact that AEP is no longer an electric utility but rather a cannibalized asset to be stripped of all its value till employees and customers are left with a bare bones skeleton wondering where their stakeholder investments disappeared to and why they have on lights.

I am so looking forward to being done with this year so I can retire in 2026.
I'm just going to keep my head down, not volunteer for anything. Just do the minimum because this year's PMR will mean nothing to me next year.
I feel like I'm going to be sick at least once each month, maybe 2 days but not in a row. Yes, I can play their game with the best of them.
In December, I'll put in my notice for Jan 2nd or these about and will most likely just skate through December when no one is around to do anything.
If I get the 2025 ICP, fine, if not, fine.
This is not the company I hired in 30+ years ago, it's just a shell of it.

Chairman Bill has decided AEP needs a "Great Leap Forward" and that the only way we will progress into the glorious future is for AEP to shed its petty attachments to history.

Any ideas why all of the booths in the 1RP lobby (displays about AEP history, achievements, etc.) have been removed over the last few weeks? Those things were only installed about 5-6 years ago. Random benches are all that’s left.

Does anyone else think that the slow down with procurement is deliberate to slow spending in Q1&Q2, waiting for trans co approval & co evals?

The transmission reorg is getting rid of the separate disciplines and instead grouping by regions. Plus a few new teams for regional SMEs and operations engineering who will supposedly take over lots of maintenance type duties that production teams usually have to do. Basically making production engineers focus only on capital projects for insourcing

The gist of the transmission reorg was that they decided the "flattening" wasn't so great after all because managers ended up with 30+ reports, so now we're unflattening and adding back some more steps.
Transmission and Distribution planning are now under the same management chain.
Also at the director level we are dividing up people by region instead of discipline. So instead of a P&C or TLE director you have an engineering director over an entire region.

CEO Bill has destroyed the culture at AEP. We have so many leaving because of his decisions and culture and the board chooses to look the other way. So sad.

Generation's Project Management Senior VP gave her 2 week notice. Why do I feel like I'm holding a bucket bailing water out of the boat when everyone else is grabbing life jackets?

So what was it for those of us NOT in transmission?

Did you miss the giant 1000+ person team meeting today at 11 AM?

Can anyone share what the massive reorg for transmission and engineering is? I haven’t heard anything and I am in the transmission group.

Another massive reorganization for Transmission and Engineering being rolled out today. They seem to be happening monthly now.

I have all external emails go to a specific inbox. Most of those emails get deleted without reading them because they are from TCS or from some other sales person, or LinkedIn. The phishing emails stand out if you just hover over the link. Anyone with some common sense will see them for what they are.
If you want.to cut as many as possible, block the sender or unsubscribe from the emails. That should cut the number of external emails you get. Learn how to create a rule and let the system do most of the work. I've cut the number I get by 80%.

One fake fishing email and I have three different people to tell me about it. It’s like office space all over again. No lessons were learned.

I made the decision to leave (after not taking the buyout) and have woken up every morning since I left feeling so much more relaxed. I had no idea just how much that place was weighing me down until it was finally in my rear view mirror. If you had told me it would be like this 5 years ago I never would have believed it. Such a shame.

It's funny to hear from people who are no longer with the company, they sound happy with the decision to leave. I have not seen on comment where they regretted leaving. Says a lot right there. I'm sure there is that moment of not wanting to pull the trigger and leave but I don't see any regrets after making the decision.

I left coming up 3 years and no regret. I would not have been allowed to take the buyout based on some conversations with old team mates but I don't think that would have swayed me either way since I left without one when looking at the writing on the wall.