Optus sheds more jobs, signals cost restraint
Optus has notified the CWU of its decision to make some 40 positions in Managed Services and Delivery redundant. The redundancies will mostly affect senior and middle management roles.
Optus says that none of the roles is being sent offshore.
The decision comes as Optus CEO Allen Lew announced both increases in Optus’ capital spending plans and an ongoing emphasis on cost control, especially labour costs.
“Managing of our cost is a very key part of what we have to do in Optus," Lew told a recent analyst briefing.
"What is not visible to all of you is the stuff that we are doing to reduce our service costs in terms of how do we get customers to go onto the internet, online to interact with us both from a sales and a service perspective, because as you know manpower costs in Australia are extremely high.”
Like Telstra, Optus clearly intends to try to reduce these labour costs by encouraging more customer on-line self-service.
Optus has reportedly said that such measures would not lead to any decrease in service quality or an overall fall in jobs. But seeing will be believing. Watch this space.
