Vodafone push may cost 200 jobs

Boss says exercise revolves around boosting service

We’re moving roles back onshore and

removing complexity from our business.jason

Paris

‘It’s not pandemic-related,” says Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Jason Paris of his company’s decision to consult on a new round of job cuts — in which some 200 roles or about 10 per cent of its staff are expected to go.

Customers’ natural fear will that service will take a hit.

But Paris says the exercise actually revolves around boosting service.

He says it’s about accelerating change. Over the past couple of years, his company has tried to improve its service, take 5G leadership, and upgrade many of its in-house systems, he says.

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On the first point, he says progress has been good, but not good enough.

“We’ve had the best service results since records began. But that means we’re only at parity with the rest of the industry. And we want service to be a differentiator for us.

“So we’re putting some money behind it. We’re moving roles back onshore and removing complexity from our business.

“That means moving some backoffice and middle management roles [out], and we’re reinvesting that money in frontline customer service.”

He emphasised that there would also be about 150 new hires. In some cases, people who lost their current roles could be retrained.

A key facet of the restructure will be merging service and sales teams.

Paris explains: “I might have a broadband issue that needs to be resolved and, at the same time, I want to talk about adding my son’s mobile account onto mine. I shouldn’t have to be transferred.”

Separate enterprise service desk and network technical teams will also be merged, again to avoid backand-forth.

The CEO said he wanted to wrap up the consultation process relatively quickly to minimise the period of uncertainty. He is aiming for the end of March.

In an email Paris sent to all staff last night, he said there would be an all-hands meeting today to discuss the initiative.

The email was set to ban forwarding, but one staffer snapped it with their phone and sent a copy to the NZ Herald. Speaking to the

Herald yesterday morning, Paris confirmed about 200 staff would be shed in the exercise. He added that Vodafone NZ is investing over $300 million in upgrades to various areas of its operation — $110m in sales and service, $115m in its digital acceleration programme and just over $100m on network expansion, including its 5G build.

Two execs depart

Paris’ email also announces that “in working through various options [chief consumer officer and director] Carolyn Luey has made a personal decision to leave Vodafone.”

It also says that “Anthony Welton’s role as Customer Operations Director is no longer required“. Welton had completed an exercise to “turn around and stabilise our customer service and operations“.

Luey became Vodafone NZ’S marketing boss in November 2018, after joining the company from MYOB. She was previously chief operating officer at Herald publisher NZME.

Welton took his current role after working for a decade for the telco’s philanthropic wing, the Vodafone NZ Foundation.

In March 2019, soon after Paris took the reins, a consultation process began as the telco looked to shed about 400 of its then-2700 staff to tighten its operation before a planned NZX listing (ultimately headed off when Infratil and Brookfield bought the company in June that year) and to free up funds for investment in new technologies.

More belt-tightening followed last year as the pandemic hurt Vodafone, and peers Spark Chorus and 2degrees, as lucrative mobile roaming revenue dried up with border closures, data caps were temporarily suspended as a relief measure and bad debts increased.

This month, Vodafone said it would sub-let around half of its Smales Farm headquarters, citing a shift to hybrid working during Covid19. The company earlier said it expected the trend to persist, with up to 40 per cent of staff working remotely at any one time. — NZ Herald

Performance SUVS might seem a bit silly, but there are a lot of them around. People love ’em. Any European brand worth its raised ride height has at least one super-quick crossover in its ranks. Preferably more.

But high-performance plug-in SUVS? There’s Porsche’s supersized Cayenne, but that’s about it right now. Which is weird, given the potential to combine smug zero-emissions city driving with an electric boost to push you back into the seat when you’re in the mood.

Well, now there’s also this: the Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar Engineered. The Volvo XC60 you know and Polestar you’ve probably heard of too: it used to be Volvo’s racing division, but it’s now a subsidiary creating its own range of bespoke performance and luxury electric vehicles (EVS). Think of it as an Ev-focused BMW M or Mercedes-amg, and like those brands it also still dabbles with enhancements for existing models as well as doing its own ground-up stuff.

That’s where this car comes in. The T8 is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) version of the XC60 SUV: petrol engine at the front, lithium-ion battery pack and electric motor driving the rear. It’s all on brand and the concept makes a lot of sense.

But the car itself? It’s a bit more edgy. The hybrid powertrain has been pumped up to 311kw/ 670Nm – not outrageous, but certainly serious. And remember, Volvo’s T8 petrol engine is turbocharged and supercharged, so it was pretty interesting even before Polestar laid hands on it.

There’s an aluminium strut under the bonnet and monster sixpiston Akebono brakes on the front, which completely fill the 21-inch wheels. The chassis features Ohlins Dual Flow Valve shock absorbers, with damping that can be adjusted to 22 different settings. Per wheel. By hand.

That’s right, adjusting the suspension is a hands-on job, with the front wheel controls under the bonnet and the rears reachable through the wheel arches. How often would you really do that? Who knows; how often would you seriously punch your family SUV to 100km/h in 5.2 seconds for that matter?

The point is, you can. This attention to detail is sheer delight for the car enthusiast and the outrageous suspension set-up makes the XC60 Polestar Engineered unique. And the under-bonnet adjusters and strut brace are beautiful to look at.

How does it work? Don’t come expecting the kind of necksnapping performance that pureevs are so good at serving up. If you’re driving the XC60 T8

Polestar briskly, it’s the sensation of the various technologies working together that makes it interesting; it may technically be an “EV”, but a lot of the appeal is mechanical.

Having that pure-ev commuting ability does make the XC60 a better SUV, though. While the standard XC60 is big on comfort and ease-of-use, Volvo’s eightspeed Geartronic transmission can be a bit dim-witted about town.

The T8 sidesteps that completely with a full charge on board by running in single-speed “Pure” electric mode.

If you’re too heavy with the right foot it’ll fire up the petrol engine to help, so Pure is not for hardcharging. But it offers pretty decent EV range: Volvo claims 46km from the 11.6kwh battery pack and we found 40km in city driving easily achievable.

That battery is tucked away in the transmission tunnel, so there’s no impact on the standard XC60’S 505l of boot space. Practical.

All of the above is relevant to the T8 in a general sense, but none of it puts the Polestar Engineered bits to work. So let’s do that.

The powertrain is at its happiest storming away in the mid-range, so it really rewards a driving style more focused on momentum than redline-chasing. Which is perfect given you can adjust the suspension just-so to suit your own personal driving character or (even better) the road ahead. Once the novelty has passed, the manually adjustable suspension is a bit of a chore – especially at the back, where you have to reach under the wheel arches, prise off a dirty rubber seal and feel for the clicks as you turn the tiny wheel.

But it’s worth having a fiddle, as it’s the chassis that brings the greatest change to Polestar from the humble XC60. The company even recommends some typical settings. Position zero (the shiny golden dial at its most extreme clockwise setting) is the firmest — and it’s really firm. Polestar suggests position 15 for performance driving, 10 for standard running and number four if you like to keep it comfy.

Dual Flow Valve is a proprietary Ohlins technology designed to speed up the response of the

bump-and-rebound of the shock absorbers. So while the ride is never cushy, it’s consistently wellcontrolled regardless of how far you’ve dialled up the firmess of the suspension.

The T8 is still a heavy beast: well over two tonnes and around 150kg more than a non-hybrid T6. But the configurable suspension makes it easy to get the thing to handle the way you want.

You can enjoy all of this from the comfort of one of the nicest cabins in any production car. Take “comfort” literally, because the seats in the XC60 are a marvel.

The Sensus nine-inch portrait touch screen in the centre console doesn’t seem quite as amazing in these days of Tesla, but it’s still nicely configured and allows a relatively button-free dashboard.

From an ease-of-use and quality point of view, this is just as impressive as any other Volvo; which is very impressive indeed.

Good luck explaining why your medium-sized family SUV is loaded with technical performance and handling equipment. But then Volvo is not alone in doing that; far from it. It’s just that the XC60 Polestar Engineered does things a bit differently and you’ve got to love it for that.