Merged staff get word on jobs

By ADAM GIFFORD

Staff of Hewlett-Packard and the former Compaq yesterday learned details of the selection process to secure jobs in the merged organisation.

New Zealand managing director Russell Hewitt said the process for some could start as early as this week, if decisions about the proposed new structure were confirmed.

He said the new Hewlett-Packard was also seeking the views of customers and channel partners.

"We hope to put together a structure which is right for New Zealand and our size in the market, which should be $550 million to $600 million.

"We need decent support to run that as a sovereignty."

He said that in the "heritage" Hewlett-Packard, many operational functions such as human resources, finance and marketing were managed from Australia.

"We're lucky there. If we had mirrored programmes, there would be a lot more rationalisation."

He said there was no target for redundancies. Much would depend on how the merged company retained its revenue in the months ahead.

Up to 58 of the 580 staff in New Zealand could lose their jobs if the announced 10 per cent cut to the merged entity's global workforce is applied here.

"Does one plus one equal 1.8 or 2.2? We have to find that out," said Hewitt.

"It would be silly to retrench massively when we are trying to go forward in the market place, but if we find we have lot of overlap we will do what is appropriate."

Some positions would continue as before.

"We call it 'adopt and go' - if we have three printer experts and three positions, I don't know why you would go through a managed selection process."

There would also be opportunities for cross-division hiring.

The merged company also had a substantial services organisation, boosted by Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Computer Sciences Corporation's New Zealand operation this year and by the people it would be taking on to handle its new Vodafone outsourcing contract.

"Our services organisation is 350 plus people, including more than 150 developers," Hewitt said.

"Heritage Hewlett-Packard also brought some managed services contracts to the table so we need to work to got to get them up and going."