Telstra will shed around 1,400 employees from its workforce in the latest round of cuts at the telco, with 22 positions in Western Australia affected.
Telstra will shed around 1,400 employees from its workforce in the latest round of cuts at the telco, with 22 positions in Western Australia affected.
Jobs will be made redundant across all divisions.
“Like all businesses today, Telstra faces an unprecedented world of technology innovation and digital disruption,” chief executive Andrew Penn said.
“I strongly believe we can succeed in this environment, however to do so we need to transform, urgently.
“We will need to become a leaner organisation, one built on digitised systems and services for customers and employees, and one where we will continue to rely on partners for scale.
“Responding to these trends, today we are announcing proposed organisational restructures and workforce changes across operations, retail, GES and media and marketing; changes that are designed to enable us to work and deliver simpler end-to-end services, reduce our overall operating costs and allow us to compete more effectively.”
Mr Penn said the redundancies would be made over the next six months, and would affect most parts of the business.
“As a company, we are facing rapidly changing customer expectations, intensified market pressures and increasing competition, disruptive technology changes and shifting industry economics,” he said.
“I believe we have a great future ahead, but to be successful we cannot afford to operate as we have always done – we must change in order to continue to deliver for our customers. That means that we have to transform and challenge every aspect of how we work.
“The proposed changes we have announced today are to set us up for the future – overall, for us to win in the long run, we need to grow our business, continue to reduce our costs and work more simply.
That is why today we are announcing a number of proposed changes that we believe will drive greater simplicity and accountability across the business – many of which you have told us would make your roles much easier.”
The news comes only a year after the telco giant cut 326 roles across its sales, service and national office teams, saying there was less need for call centre workers with more than 50 per cent of its customer interactions happening online.
Fierce price competition and lower regulated call charges led to the telco giant's worse-than-expected first-half net profit and a cut in its full-year income forecast.
In February, Telstra reported first-half net profit dropped 14.4 per cent to $1.79 billion on the back of a 6.4 per cent fall in revenue to $12.8 billion.
The telco reaffirmed its guidance for low-to-mid-single digit earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation growth and free cash flow of between $3.5 to $4 billion for 2016-17.
It also flagged restructuring costs for the full financial year of between $300-500 million.
Investors have shrugged off the news of job losses, however, with Telstra shares up 0.46 per cent at $4.40 at midday.
