3,300 Shaw employees accept buyouts
TORONTO — The departure of one-quarter of Shaw Communications Inc.’s workforce will be manageable — and mitigated by a technology-driven push toward customer self-service — even though the 3,300 who elected to take a voluntary severance package was five times more than its original estimate, its president said Thursday.
The Calgary-based company, which owns Canada’s secondlargest cable TV operation and the country’s fourth-largest mobile phone service, had initially aimed the package at 6,500 employees and estimated about 10 per cent would accept the deal offered about two weeks ago. It said Thursday that all eligible employees who volunteered to take the deal will be accepted.
“We publicly set a modest goal,” Shaw president Jay Mehr said in an interview.
“I think what we have now learned — and it’s a good outcome — is that the take-up we now have in the first phase means that we won’t have to do cuts later on.”
The departures will be spread over 18 months.
The move is part of a multiyear initiative aimed at succeeding amid technological changes in a rapidly changing and intensely competitive marketplace. Shaw has said it plans to make
more use of online and smartphone apps to provide customer service, and provide more selfinstalled service.
The majority of departures will be outside its customer support, retail and sales operations and involve roles that are being affected by technological change as Shaw adopts some of the methods used by Google and Amazon.
“Two years from now, people will not say that we were being
too bold to embrace the new model. As we talk to both Canadians and our team about it, people understand that digital and selfserve is the way of the future,” Mehr said.
“And it’s how Canadians actually want to be served.”
Instead of getting orders for a video service by phone and sending technicians to install set-top boxes, he said, orders will be placed through an app. Then a
hockey puck-sized device will be delivered to the home within hours, and the customer will enable the service by scanning a bar-code with a smartphone.
The anticipated long-term net cost savings — estimated at $225 million by fiscal 2020 — will provides room to make “appropriate investments” as required, Mehr said.