Telstra has cut 3200 staff since the middle of June last year under its massive T22 restructure, and has indicated it will use automation to increase cuts to customer-facing roles.
The telco used its half-year results today to put some numbers around the impact of job losses on the organisation.
Overall, it has set a goal of an 8000 net reduction of full time roles, consisting of 9500 roles being cut and 1500 being created. It recently became clear, however, that many of the new roles would be based in India.
The telco said today it had cut 3200 roles to date, including 1500 management and executive roles, as well as “back-of-house” functions.
Some customer-facing roles had also been cut, though Telstra said these were “directly tied to volume reductions”, such as call volumes.
What’s clear is that the number of customer-facing roles being removed is set to increase, and some of this will occur due to the introduction of automation.
The telco said in FY20 it would target both back-of-house and customer-facing roles, while in FY21 - the third phase of cuts - it will “increase the proportion of customer-facing roles being removed”, due to “simplification and automation”.
By 2022, when T22 wraps up, Telstra’s direct workforce will be somewhere around 26,600, down from 34,600 in mid-2018.
Telstra said it would also target rationalisation of its indirect workforce, which Telstra estimates numbers about 40,000.
This includes personnel from tech vendors, consultancies and outsourcing providers. Telstra didn’t put numbers around reductions here, saying only that it non-direct labour is “expected to decline as a proportion of the overall workforce.”
Telstra reported a net profit after tax (NPAT) for the first half of 2019 of $1.2 billion, down 27.4 percent on the same period in 2018. It recorded this on income of $13.8 billion, which was down 4.1 percent.
CEO Andy Penn said that NBN headwinds, which the telco has consistently blamed for its financial woes, continued to weigh on results.
There were a handful of bright spots for Telstra, with additions to its mobile base.
In particular, the telco managed to add 261,000 internet of things (IoT) services, and its revenue in that space jumped 35.6 percent.
