Telstra has decided to lay off 8,000 staff in a bid to slash $1b off the bottom line as well as restructure the business and spinning off their fixed line business into a separate entity.
Telstra will also drastically reduce the number of mobile plans for business and consumers from a massive 1800 plans to just 20.
Telstra made the announcements today with chief executive Andy Penn saying the moves were designed for the company to remain competitive in the fast-changing telecommunications market.
“We are now at a tipping point where we must act more boldly if we are to continue to be the nation’s leading telecommunications company,” Mr Penn said in a statement.
“In the future our workforce will be a smaller, knowledge-based one with a structure and way of working that is agile enough to deal with rapid change.”
Telstra’s head count today sits around 32,000 staff and that will now be reduced by 8,000.
The company says most of the job cuts will be coming from middle and upper management which will shrink by 25 per cent – that means one out of every four positions will no longer exist.
The move will see Telstra save $1b in the short term and a total of $2.5b by 2022.
Another cost-saving measure will be the reduction of the 1800 plans for small business customers and consumers to 20.
Telstra says it also aims to reduce the need for two-thirds of customer service calls within the next two years.
InfraCo will be the name of the new entity that will take over all of Telstra’s non-mobile related infrastructure including fixed line and fibre networks, copper, HFC cable and exchanges.
Telstra will also make a further $11b by selling services to wholesale customers and the NBN.
Despite the job cuts and restructuring, Telstra insists it is still a top-shelf telco brand and that the rollout of its 5G mobile network will be unaffected.
