Vodafone NZ losing 200 staff, including two key execs

Vodafone NZ CEO Jason Paris.

Vodafone NZ is poised to lose another 200 staff in another restructure.

An email to all staff by chief executive Jason Paris says there will be an all-hands meeting today to discuss the initiative.

The email was security-set to ban forwarding, but one staffer photographed it and sent a copy to the Herald. The insider said 200 staff would be shed in the restructure.

Speaking to the Herald this morning, Paris confirmed around 200 staff would be shed in the exercise - but added that up to 150 would be hired over time.

The restructure was, in part, to address the duplication of some back-office and middle-management roles, freeing resources to reinforce frontline staff and upgrading services and networks under a $335m investment drive. In some cases, there would be retraining rather than a new hire.

The CEO said Vodafone had been on a drive to improve customer service. It was now on a par with peers, he said. The telco needed to accelerate is restructure to lead the pack.

Paris said Vodafone NZ currently had around 2000 staff. He was aiming for the restructure to be over - in terms of confirming roles - by the end of March. (Read more from Paris here).

Two execs depart

Paris' email also announces that "In working through various options [chief consumer officer and director] Carolyn Luey has made a personal decision to leave Vodafone."

It also says that "Anthony Welton's role as Customer Operations Director is no longer required." Welton had completed an exercise to "turn around and stabilise our customer service and operations."

Luey became Vodafone NZ's marketing boss in November 2018 after joining the company from MYOB. She was previously chief operating officer at Herald publisher NZME.

Welton took his current role after working for a decade for the telco's philanthropic wing, the Vodafone NZ Foundation.

In March 2019, soon after Jason Paris took the reins, a consultation process began as the telco looked to shed around 400 of its then 2700 staff to tighten its operation before a planned NZX listing (ultimately head-off when Infratil and Brookfield bought the company in June that year) and to free up funds for investment in new technologies.

More belt-tightening followed last year as the pandemic hurt Vodafone, plus peers Spark Chorus and 2degrees as lucrative mobile roaming revenue dried up with border closures, data caps were temporarily suspended as a relief measures and bad debts increased.

Earlier this month, Vodafone said it would sub-let around half of its Smales Farm headquarters, citing a shift to hybrid working during Covid-19. The company earlier said it expected the trend to persist beyond, with up to 40 per cent of staff working remotely at any one time.