The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Job cuts loom for Barclays IT staff

Up to 200 jobs could go

Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer: 30-day free trial.

Barclays Bank is to cut as many as 200 jobs from its IT staff, according to reports. The company confirmed that redundancies are in the pipeline, but declined to discuss specific numbers.

The bank, which has recently appointed a new head of IT, also confirmed that it would be "reviewing the structure and nature" of its £350m outsourcing deal with EDS, adding that by its very nature, the deal with EDS was a "one off".

Barclays confirmed that it is implementing a new grading structure for performance reviews, by which employees will be ranked from A to D. Employees given a D grade are believed to be the ones most likely to lose their jobs, according to The Times.

"The A-D rankings apply to our senior managers across the whole of the bank, not just the IT department," the company said in a statement. "It is always better for us to improve an employee's performance than to replace him or her. If you can't it is right to manage an underperforming employee out of the organisation."

Rumours that Barclays is likely to drop its contract with EDS have been circulating in recent weeks, but the services company would not comment further, not would it speculate as to any likely successors.

At the time of writing EDS had not returned our calls seeking comment, but a spokeswoman for the company told The Times: "We are confident that our agreements with Barclays are flexible enough to accommodate the bank’s changing requirements."®

Free whitepaper – PowerEdge M610 technical guidebook

Don’t Miss

DustbinDirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

Ventblockers Horror beyond human imagination

SC09Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores

SC09 Jaguar munches Roadrunner

Ubuntu teaser Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Smooth Windows upgrade it ain't

Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter

Narrowcasting for the email classes