Everything Everywhere axes 1,200
Let the synergies commence
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The newly-combined Orange and T-Mobile will be laying off more than 1,200 people whose work it reckons is replicated between the two companies - 7.5 per cent of the combined staff.
The cuts will be in the back offices; retail and customer support staff will keep their jobs. But departments whose work is replicated by both companies - legal, marketing, IT support, HR and so forth - can expect to take the brunt of the cuts.
The company will be consulting over the next three months to decide exactly who's for the chop, as it is legally required to do, but this time it looks as though it really will be middle management which gets pruned.
Senior management has already been cut back - around 30 posts have disappeared since Everything Everywhere became a legal entity. The company has just committed to opening more shops and maintaining more base stations, so front line staff can't really be cut as long as Everything Everywhere continues to market itself as two separate brands (Orange and T-Mobile).
If it's only duplicated work that's cut then customers shouldn't initially notice, though it's hard to imagine such changes can be accomplished without any disruption. The network and customer support might continue as usual (and the latter should be in a better mood this morning), but a network operator has to negotiate with suppliers, roll out new services and do all sorts of logistics planning that will obviously be interrupted as the synergies are applied. It might be a year or two before such interruptions manifest as problems, which will be small consolation to the 1,200 laid off. ®
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COMMENTS
Sounds awfully familiar.
I remember when France Telecom took outright control of Orange plc (as it was). I was one of the engineers that got laid off then to help with the motherships €80billion debt. The three month consultation was a sham. I was placed on three months paid gardening leave after only one month (The two remaining months of consultation, plus my one month notice period).
I have close friends still at Everything Everywhere who have been through re-orgs every year since then. "It's annual 'justify your job' time" and my old department has gone from 15 souls to 3, with the three remaining apparently kept on because they could speak French (though that is a vicious rumour). They better brush up on their German as well now.
Paris, because when corporate headquarters moved there it all went wrong. Much like it will for the Hilton group.
Orange/T-Mobile Roaming
For users who would like to roam onto the T-Mobile network when they're not in an Orange network area: http:/www.orange.co.uk/share
Vice-versa for T-Mobile customers: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/share
Outrage
Outsourcing has been the big problem. Tom Alexander advised 2 yrs ago we would bring back the outsourced team. now we are 1 entity under Everything Everywhere, we are to follow TMobiles success with outsourcing our teams in Finance!
Bring the customer experience back to an all time low. Although we are classed as back office, dealing with credit underwriting and customer cais, fraud prevention, should not be outsourced. Should be dealt with in a timely manner in the UK. My closest friends and family have been affected by this. and its an absolute Outrage. out of the 2 brands Orange was the most successful, so why are we adopting T-Mobiles processes is beyond me!
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