SACK MORE BRITS, Symantec UK told by US supremos - sources

Symantec UK bosses must redraft their master plan to layoff Brit workers - after their first proposal was rejected by the US top brass for not cutting far enough, sources claim.

As we reported a week ago, up to 1,700 employees worldwide - eight per cent of the total workforce - are expected to get the chop during June and July as Symantec restructures.

The American security software giant's CEO Steve Bennett wants a revolution leaner organisation with fewer layers of management to reduce bureaucracy and speed up decision making; that's part of the thinking, at least.

Hacking out a layer of middle management will also no doubt reduce costs for Symantec once the exceptional charges for restructuring are out of the way.

Sources close to the firm claimed UK chiefs, based in the company's Reading office, submitted a plan of spending cuts, but it was not seemed sufficient by the global heads in the US.

"Every country put together a plan of action on how to implement cost cutting. The UK sent its plan to central and they bounced it back saying it wasn't deep enough," said one.

The company's troops in Blighty reckon the majority of cuts will now be made next month rather than in June. It is not clear at this stage how many people the company wants to jettison.

A Symantec PR told us:

“Symantec is in the midst of a company-wide transformation. As part of this effort, we are engaged in a company-wide reorganisation. As a result, some positions are being eliminated.

"This action is a reflection of our new strategy and organisational simplification initiative announced by Symantec’s executives on 23 January.

"One of the goals of Symantec’s reorganisational effort is to make the company’s employee reporting structure more efficient and support the company strategy moving forward. We have no additional details to provide at this time.“

A reshuffle on the senior management in Europe began in March: EMEA el presidente John Brigden returned to the US, and veep for northern Europe Matt Ellard replaced him, as revealed by El Chan. Brigden is now senior veep for global verticals and enterprise business strategy.

EMEA channel head Jason Ellis moved to veep role for inside sales and the customer management centre in the same month. ®