More to come?
Vodafone are also outsourcing management of their network to Ericsson, believe this will be announced soon, these cuts could be the thin end of the wedge.
UK network operator Vodafone has confirmed it is laying off 500 staff in its continuing effort to cut costs in the face of falling profits. The 500 people were given the bad news this morning. The cuts are coming from across the group, though retail operations won't be affected; 170 are being laid off from the Newbury …
I happen to know one of the poor unfortunate people affected by this round of job cuts. They are a very hard working bunch of people, the vast majority doing a difficult job under what seems to be sometimes extreme pressure. The 500 are probably working very hard, the loss of them is only going to increase the pressure on those left in the company.
As for the comments made on this website, snappy sarcasm does not help to cushion the blow for those vodafone employees who may have stumbled across this page in the search for an explaination as to the cruel blow their emplayer has just dealt them.
I would say what I think of Vodafone today, but I think it's beyond this websites comprehension.
A "bunch" of indians (not even Indians). Like a bunch of parsley, or bananas?
I don't have a problem dealing with people with accents or dark skin, especially when they are well mannered and are often educated to a higher level than me and know their products and processes well. I don't like it when they lie and tell you their name is "John" when in fact it'll be something like Ashwin and the fact that they are given little empowerment doesn't help; but other than that I'm fine with it.
"Vodafone are also outsourcing management of their network to Ericsson, believe this will be announced soon, these cuts could be the thin end of the wedge."
Kinda true but "management" of the network will always end up lying in the UK as far as end to end stuff is concerned, don't forget VF do a lot of corp. and govt. contracts. Ericsson will end up with all the RAN and control of a lot of the boxes as they supply them (as they do across the world)! I hear the majority of the UK stuff will be supported elsewhere within other VF owned European networks. This makes sense for a company the size of VF but pulling it off effectively is another thing altogether.
The thing people don't realise is these job cut's are restructuring so cutting out the dead wood. Economic boom creates the typical people who have meetings about meetings. I think this will be the first of a number of cuts at Vodafone and similar will happen across the industry as profit slumps in the coming months.
It's sad to see but fingers crossed the valuable will survive, of course this is optimistic and i'm sure many who are laid off VF will turn around and sorely regret the decision.
My thoughts go out to anyone in VF who got the bad news.