Reduced demand for Sky to result in job losses

A NUMBER of people are being made redundant at two call centres in Wales because of a “reduced demand” for Sky .

Sky uses outsource partner Firstsource Solutions UK which is making the redundancies at two offices in Cardiff because of “reduced customer demand”.

The staff affected work from offices in Cardiff Bay and Oakleigh House on St Andrew’s Place and are believed to be based in human resources, quality control, training and recruitment. They also include senior managers and team leaders.

Firstsource would not confirm how many people were affected but an employee, who did not want to be named, believed it to be around 30 people.

A spokesperson for Firstsource said: “We are consulting with a small number of support staff in Cardiff as a result of reduced customer demand.

“As the consultation process is currently taking place, we are unable to comment further at this stage.”

The employee said: “Everyone is gutted. It wasn’t as if people weren’t expecting it but it is still a shock when it happens.

“Everyone is on edge. Some people have reacted quite negatively and some people are upset.

“They say the reason for the redundancies is that more people are going online rather than going through the call centre. Some days it can be quite quiet but some days it can be back to back.

“We don’t know if there will be more redundancies at this stage.”

In January last year, Firstsource signed a 10 year deal with Sky to expand its existing partnership.

Speaking at the time, it said the expanded partnership would see 1,200 people employed in addition to the existing 4,000 people working on behalf of Sky.

In February 1,100 jobs went at the Cardiff call centre of supermarket giant Tesco.

The supermarket’s customer engagement centres will now be transferred to a site in Dundee, creating 250 extra jobs.

Nick Ireland, divisional officer for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw), described the closure as a “massive blow” for the Cardiff economy.

It was also reported in February that staff at British Gas offices around the country were bracing themselves for further job losses as the company’s owner Centrica said it was looking to reduce headcount by 4,000.

It comes as the energy supplier announced a 17% fall in profits and blamed political intervention in the UK energy market.

Centrica would not comment on where those job losses might take place. The British Gas customer service centre in Cardiff is believed to employ at least 1,200 people.