Anne Avonlee was one of 75 SummitStone employees to walk into a small-group meeting Aug. 1 and walk out without a job.
She, along with 10% of the Larimer County behavioral health care provider’s workforce, had been laid off as part of a staff reduction executives said was needed to balance the budget due to changes in Medicaid following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic’s public health emergency.
Employees were told in small groups they were terminated effective immediately, that they would not get severance pay and they could not go back to their offices to tell their teams or their clients, multiple affected employees told the Coloradoan. They would have health insurance through the end of the month.
So what did Avonlee and others from her small group meeting do? They went to a coffee shop. As these small group meetings with executives and human resources occurred throughout the day, other affected employees joined them, along with family and friends, Avonlee said.
“We were trying to just stick to each other and provide each other with a community of support, and we were trying to do that the way we were taught by SummitStone,” Avonlee said.