Vodafone staff braced for layoffs
Vodafone New Zealand staff face an uncertain future with redundancies on the horizon as the company looks to a new way of operating.
Staff were updated during a series of meetings yesterday about department changes and a change in strategy for the organisation.
An ex-manager, who maintains good links inside the telco, told the Herald that from consultations so far, the widespread expectation among staff is that hundreds of positions will go. Another source who still works for the company backed up his story.
But speaking to Newstalk ZB, Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Jason Paris said it was too early to tell how many of the telco's 2700 staff will see their roles axed.
“There’s new roles being created, some are going to be merged together and there will be roles that will be removed. It’s fair to say that the change will be significant because the strategy is pretty bold.”
Paris said around 10 people will be leaving from the executive team, but said new roles were being created in areas they think are important to the future team.
He said while every area of the business will be reviewed between now and the end of March, any areas they can automate or digitise will probably be the most impacted.
“We haven’t got our digital channels where we want them to be . . so we’ll be doing a lot of work on automation and digitalisation.”
Paris said you’ll start to see the company rearrange from trying to win new customers to doing a “much better” job of looking after existing customers.
Paris said his goal is to prepare the business for an IPO next year.
“My remit is to get the business in shape over 2019 to list in 2020,” he told the Herald in November, just after starting his new role.
Notably, he said Vodafone NZ will position itself on the NZX (or ASX) as a dividend rather than a growth company, implying an ongoing focus on tight cost-controls. And in an interview over the Christmas break, Paris said: “The business hasn’t achieved the ambitious plans it set itself in 2018 so we are having to make some tough prioritisation calls at the moment. We need to speed up our innovation, decision making and delivery, and to simplify our products and experiences.”
Vodafone NZ’s profit dropped $7.7m down to $39m last year on revenue that edged up $5.m to $2 billion.