HPE Layoffs 2023 – Did HPE Lay Off Employees?

HPE Layoffs – We hope the headlines are okay with you as they sound more familiar. If this is the case, then it will be easier to make you understand this particular topic. 

Reports from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and career transitioning firm, said. A lot of tech companies, including HPE, laid off thousands of employees across the globe. 

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Did HPE Lay Off Employees?

In 2020, HPE, or Hewlett Packard Enterprise, announced plans to lay off hundreds of its employees in North America. According to sources, HPE boosted its go-to-market model – “Partner-First,” for the start of its fiscal year.

Many employees were impacted when it comes to how many and who were affected in that layoff round. However, the sources said partner business managers, direct sales reps, and sales leaders were most concerned.

Initially, it needed to be disclosed how many employees were laid off. But a storage-focused news site – Blocks and Files, was the first to admit this news. It said around 500 employees would be eliminated, and the majority were from the sales department.

HPE did not disclose anything about layoffs before. The company said, “We are now focusing on critical core businesses and growth areas. This way, we can boost our strategy. To do so, we have started to invest and realign our workforce. We are promised that impacted team members will get sufficient support. But these changes are necessary to be made with transparency and empathy.”

Also added in a statement, “The changes we have planned to make will be proven effective in advancing our strategy. Also, it’ll make our organization more agile. This way, we can deliver everything from edge to cloud as a service. Moreover, we can assist our partners and customers adapt to the new business environment. Or can harness the power of their data wherever it lives.”

In November, HPE said, “We are now heading into the next fiscal year, so we mainly focus on opening up a lot more of the customer base to the channel.” A month ago in the same year, Keith White – General Manager of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Business Group, said. “In my point of view, there are significant steps that we have to make with these customers who are going forward. We’ve found that they have the necessary resources, capabilities, and tools to help serve the broader set of our customer base.”

A few channel sources called the “partner-first” model of the new North America – a logical extension of the HPE Next Initiative introduced in 2017. This North American model declines overlapping partner business managers and account reps. Consequently, it reduced the sales plans inside HPE as the number of sales plans dropped from 400 to 25.

One of the sales executives of the top channel said, “We had a lot of people getting paid on a deal. There were generalists, storage reps, and a few other district managers.” Also added, “The new go-to-market plan streamlines a model with a lot of overlap with partner business managers and product-focused account reps.” 

The executive said, “Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, how do they sustain in this environment.”

To double down on the channel with a partner-first strategy. New Managing Director Paul Hunter and seasoned channel leaders led the new North America team, including General Manager Enterprise East Terry Richardson and HPE Vice President and HPE Vice President West and Center Peter Brennan.

Paul said, “North America’s new HPE team knows the channel’s value.” Paul Hunter and Terry Richardson understand the value of the channel as they have channel DNA and the engineering talent we bring to the market. I have seen HPE being inspired by the engineering talent and the channel’s sales.”

Executives interviewed a few of the HPE workers affected by the layoff. One of these executives confirmed, “It looks like HPE will have a better channel presence for the new fiscal year. Besides, with a stronger go-to-market alignment.” 

He added, “According to me, these changes are important and will make a significant difference. If they want to be successful, they are in great need to grip the solution architects, engineering, sales, and marketing of the channel.”

In 2020, It was revealed that firstly, HPE focused on the next chapter of its Next restructuring initiative. Later, it announced the North American cuts. It targeted gross savings by 2022 of at least 1 billion US dollars.

On October 1, 2020, HPE conducted a securities analyst meeting. The company’s CEO, Antonio Neri, said, “We are making bold changes to our go-to-market strategy. To do so, we are re-considering our go-to-market strategy to increase the customer experience. Alongside this, we can boost our service mix. These changes are made to these teams so that HPE delivers a holistic and more seamless experience.” 

In response, the sales executive told another partner that It’s all about GreenLake going forward. Everything from presales to solution architects to delivery is about to be GreenLake focused.” They added, “You will not be able to do well with HPE going forward. If you cannot adapt to these changes and do not make a difference in the GreenLake ecosystem.” 

Sources said, “HPE now becomes laser-focused. Customers and partners are now adapting to a new business environment with the help of it. It happened as it wanted to let all of its customers harness the power of their data where they live.” 

Another channel source who was already known about the HPE go-to-market strategy confirmed this. The key for HPE is getting everyone in the field. It is going to be whether the company supports the channel push with a helping hand for direct reps. The key focused on building strong relations with the partners who competed directly in the field.” At last, sources said, “The “partner-first” strategy of HPE ensured to be 100 percent.”

HP Layoffs

As we have already discussed, in 2015, Hewlett Packard split into two companies, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprises. Both of the companies have announced layoffs. But recently, HP Inc. announced layoffs. At the same time, HPE announced the same a few years back.

According to sources, HP laid off around 9,000 employees in the next three years. This reduction is a part of the company’s strategy. HP reported low PC sales and weakness in commercial sales during the quarter that ended October 31. 2023. Because the company is preparing for its “Future Ready Transformation Plan.” Not only this year, HP also laid off around 51,000 employees in October 2021. While in 2019, it laid off about 7,000 to 9,000 of its workforce.

Why Did HPE Lay Off Employees?

The primary reason for Layoffs in every tech sector, including HPE, is overhiring. This is one of the most probable reasons behind this particular issue globally. In truth, during the Coronavirus pandemic, many tech companies over-hired employees. Now, all these companies are finding ways to rebalance their workforces. The only way they speculated is by laying off employees.

Most tech companies said, “After the Coronavirus pandemic, we are considering global conflicts, economic turmoil, and inflation. Well, there are a lot of other issues that we are struggling with. So laying off employees is the best option to rebalance and boost our companies’ businesses.”

HPE focuses on partnering with customers so that they get outcomes and will be helped to drive their individual and special digital transformations. The CEO said these bold moves help our business in simplifying processes, driving agility, boosting execution, and strengthening capabilities. 

In truth, HPE announced layoffs in 2020; on the other hand, it invested a large amount of money in sales resources, GreenLake enablement, and training. 

We can’t deny that life is so much different in 2023. So we cannot consider today’s life as the same as past times. This is why tech or non-tech companies are laying off employees. Besides, we focus on improving the sluggish economy of the past. 

We are not saying that the past times only created a big fuss in today’s life. But also, it has increased the prevalence of the digital realm in our lives. Due to this, everyone who is worthy can be able to work remotely with no issues. Moreover, we can learn, shop, create, and communicate about anything anywhere. It is now all about technology.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise/ HPE

HPE stands for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. It is an information technology company founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California. It is an American Multinational business-focused company based in Spring, Texas, United States. It specializes in storage, containerization software, servers, and consulting and support. It was founded as a part of the splitting of the Hewlett-Packard Company. Later, Hewlett-Packard split into two companies. The split changed its name to HP Inc.; another company is Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HP Inc. retained its old HP personal computer and printing business. Along with its stock price under the NYSE ticker symbol (HPE). When HP Inc spun off HPE, at that time, the annual revenue of HPE was slightly less than HP Inc. 

In 2017, HPE merged with Computer Sciences Corporation to become DXC Technology by spinning off its Enterprise Services business. The same year, HPE merged with Micro Focus by spinning off its software business segment. A year later, HPE was enlisted in the list of the largest United States corporations in total revenue. It is believed that HPE ranked 107 on that list in 2018.

HPE Operations

A large US-based business and technology services company – HPE, has over 240,000 employees. HPE has four major operating units, and these are as follows:

  • Enterprise Group usually works in storage, networking, consulting, servers, and support.
  • Services
  • Software
  • Financial Services

In 2016, HPE sold one of its Enterprise Services divisions to its rival company – Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

It operates in around 60 countries centered in metropolitan areas.

HPE’s major locations include:

  • Argentina
  • Colombia
  • India
  • Costa Rica
  • Mexico
  • Brazil
  • The United Kingdom
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • Germany
  • Egypt
  • New Zealand
  • Hungary 
  • Spain
  • Slovakia
  • Israel
  • South Africa
  • Malaysia
  • Italy
  • The Philippines

How Does HPE GreenLake Deliver Results?

HPE GreenLake’s Block Storage is the first block storage service that delivers a 100 percent data availability guarantee cloud operational model. It helps in bringing self-service agility to critical enterprise applications and transforms businesses faster. 

HPE layoffs were believed to happen when it boosted channel investment to power big on-premises Green Lake pay-per-use sales growth. Due to this, The giant Green Lake cloud services sales blitz.

HPE laid off employees in 2020, affecting hundreds of employees. The company wanted to focus on its growth and development. According to sources, the layoff is necessary as it played the most critical role in boosting company sales growth. It was part of a stepped-up focus on everything from edge to cloud platform as a service sales strategy. 

GreenLake cloud services sales blitz includes a sizable investment in its sales reps. The new GreenLake sales reps are charged with working in collaboration with partners. Moreover, it skyrocketed the account coverage model for all of its partners so that they can drive a new logo with a fresh perspective.

Sales Team of North America integrates with the channel through HPE’s “Partner First” plan. This plan was launched with a perspective to deliver tighter alignment with partners. It aimed to provide alignment in a simpler and more go-to-market model so that it could drive growth in midmarket and SMBs.

Wrapping Up

HPE laid off hundreds of employees to rebalance its workforce. Companies like HPE are well known for the fact that every company in 2023 is nearly a tech company in some aspects. It is because now the tech talent performing complex roles list goes on and touches every sector. For example, there are app developers for apparel companies, machine learning architects for drugstores, data scientists for coffee shop chains, and many more. Hundreds of tech companies announced layoffs this year, including HPE. 

When it comes to the company’s reviews about its working area, environment, and all, based on the company’s employee reviews, HPE has an overall rating of 4.2 out of 5. The majority of employees recommend working at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, while some do not recommend the same. 

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