500 Chorus staff called into consultation meetings

Technology Editor/Senior Business Writer·NZ Herald·

29 Aug, 2019 06:20 AM2 mins to read

Departing Chorus chief executive Kate McKenzie. Photo / File

Chorus confirms around 500 staff - about half of its employees - are being consulted on a restructure.

An insider told the Herald that staff were called in for "redundancy meetings" from 11.30am this morning.

A Chorus spokesman confirmed that meetings were underway, and will continue "over the next few weeks".

"As [departing CEO] Kate McKenzie flagged on Monday at our annual results, we are in the process of combining our customer care and network field management field teams," he said.

"Today's meetings kick off the consultation phase with the people in those teams. There are no redundancies at this stage."

McKenzie said on Monday that by merging the two teams in a customer network operations team, "We believe we can ensure a more end-to-end focus for customers."

She said the two teams contained around 500 staff, or roughly half of the network company's workforce.

But although such a high percentage of employees are involved, a person close to the process told the Herald that tens of staff rather than hundreds would be laid off - and that unlike Vodafone NZ's recent restructure, there are "no plans to outsource."

However, the insider also said that some job losses were inevitable.

"Now that we're coming to the end of the UFB build, we need fewer bodies in some areas so some job losses are inevitable. It's just the nature of where the business is at," he said.

The original UFB build, brining fibre to 75 per cent of the country, will wrap up at the end of this year, though some "UFB2" areas that were subsequently added, boosting coverage to 85 per cent, won't be finished until the end of 2022.

Earlier this week, Chorus reported a 2 per cent dip in revenue to $970m and a 38 per cent fall in full-year profit to $53m amid higher UFB lending costs and Spark's incursion into the fixed-wireless market.