MSUFCU Dismisses One-Fifth of IT Department
Early last week, the MSU Federal Credit Union laid off 24 members of its information technology (IT) department. ELi confirmed the dismissals after speaking with MSUFCU CEO April Clobes.
According to the Lansing Area Economic Partnership, MSUFCU is one of the ten largest private industry employers in the Lansing area.
“We had a reorganization and combination of several departments under a new chief operator leader,” Clobes said in a phone interview with ELi. “Some projects needed a better strategic alignment and duplicated positions were no longer needed.”
Clobes, who has served as CEO since March 2015, said MSUFCU still has more than 100 people on its IT teams.
“This really is about business and business strategy and making sure we have the skills we need moving forward,” she said.
Dismissed employees were receiving “appropriate severance payments related to years of service” and “career placement assistance,” the CEO said.
When asked if any of the positions were eliminated because of increased use of artificial intelligence, Clobes said no.
ELi spoke with one of the remaining members of the MSUFCU IT team on Thursday evening. With more than seven years of service with the credit union, they requested anonymity to avoid any workplace retribution.
“I got a text from someone I work with [on Tuesday],” they said. “We kept hearing rumors throughout the day but it wasn’t until a pre-scheduled town hall meeting held that afternoon and [we] found out what happened.”
The employee said most of the IT department works remotely and the meeting took place virtually. They also said the layoffs were completely unexpected.
“We knew there was restructuring going on,” they said. “But we weren’t aware that anything like this was being considered. But you’ve got to give [Ben Maxim, chief technology officer] credit. In that virtual meeting room, he sat there and told us what happened and why it happened and allowed us to ask any questions we had for over an hour.”
The staff heard from Clobes via video message later in the week.
When asked about the CEO’s comments about duplicated positions, the employer said they could see why the executive would think that.
“But from my point of view,” they said, “there’s always work that needs to be done.”
The employee said that they lost members of their own working group on Tuesday, June 3 and are still mulling over how the layoffs have impacted their view of the company.
“It’s interesting,” they said. “I said this much earlier last week [before the layoffs], but I’ve never been part of an organization that lives its mission like the credit union does. This week is the first time that’s been shaken a bit for me. I still believe in this organization, I do.
“We’re still there, but we’re still grieving the loss of people we’ve worked with. The ground is shifting.”
ELi reached out to Ben Maxim, chief technology officer, and other members of the impacted teams, for comment; none returned our calls.