Contact planning to send jobs to India

The jobs of more than a quarter of all staff at a Contact Energy centre are under threat as the power giant considers outsourcing the positions to India.

Contact Energy spokesman Jonathan Hill told the Weekend Herald talks had started with about 65 of its staff at its Lower Hutt centre, which employs about 200 people, about a proposal to outsource their back-office retail positions.

Mr Hill said Contact had begun a "significant transformation of its business processes" as it sought to upgrade its retail processing software.

"Part of the transformation involves significant improvements to Contact's retail billing systems," he said.

"Contact is partnering with Wipro Technologies for the transformation."

Wipro Technologies' office is in Bangalore, India.

The outsourcing company, India's third-largest software services provider and whose chairman Azim Premji was worth US$14.8 billion in 2006, already has contracts with Australia's Origin Energy.

Origin owns 51 per cent of Contact Energy.

Last October, Origin Energy said it had selected Wipro Technologies as its preferred partner in a project to "transform its retail business processes".

Mr Hill said that "as part of its retail business transformation", Contact was consulting staff on a proposal to outsource some of the company's retail back office processing functions to Wipro.

He was vague when asked why Contact, which had a 50.4 per cent fall in its net profit to $117.5 million for the year to June, was considering outsourcing the positions.

"Contact always consults staff about change proposals - it's important to get staff feedback," he said.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union spokesman Andrew Little said that although the union had only one member among those affected by the proposal, it was concerned that local jobs could be at risk.

"We just wonder how much business sense it makes," he said.

"I think the difficulty that most New Zealanders have is when they ring a New Zealand-based company they expect to hear a Kiwi accent and people who are familiar with our locality."

Mercury Energy general manager James Munro believed back-office retail positions were best done inside its business.

He said Mercury was not considering outsourcing any of its roles overseas although he admitted part of its sales strategy was run by an Australian firm.

"Every business has to make its own choice," he said. But from our perspective it [outsourcing] is not something we are considering.

"We see the retail back office as a core competency as they would and it's very important it runs really efficiently."

Mr Hill, who would not comment on whether staff had been offered other positions within the company, said Contact's consultation was expected to run until mid-December.

Contact Energy employs about 1000 people and Mr Hill said the proposal would not affect its call centre staff in Dunedin, Christchurch or Levin.