Trade Me planning staff cuts

Trade Me has announced a restructure to reduce its wage costs by about 20 per cent.

Trade Me chief executive Anders Skoe said yesterday that the impacts of Covid-19 and the lockdown had been felt across the business, which employed about 600 people.

‘‘The pandemic has been incredibly hard on Kiwi businesses and many of the businesses that use Trade Me can’t operate normally at this time, which in turn impacts how they use our services,’’ Skoe said.

‘‘There is significant uncertainty around the outlook of these businesses and the wider New Zealand economy in the medium and longer term.

‘‘This is not a decision that we have taken lightly, we don’t want to lose any of our talented people, but we need to make hard decisions to protect Trade Me’s future as a business.

‘‘We’ve implemented a range of cost-saving measures to this point, however, they have not achieved the necessary cash savings required to avoid reducing our wage bill through a restructure.’’

Skoe said staff were informed of the restructure on Wednesday.

‘‘We’re now consulting on changes with our executive and senior leadership teams, after that we will put a proposal to the rest of our staff.’’

Skoe expected the new structure to be in place on July 1. He would not comment on the nature of roles the company was ‘‘looking to change’’ through the proposal while it was still in front of staff, ‘‘but changes will be made right across the business at every level’’.

‘‘We are known for looking after our people and for doing right by them in these situations and this restructure will be no different,’’ Skoe said.

In March, the company announced a ‘‘very small number’’ of employees may be out of a job as the online trading platform made changes to its business.

At that time it said it was reallocating some staff members to other parts of the business.

Trade Me has offices in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.