Future of HP staff still up in the air

By PETER GRIFFIN

The new Hewlett-Packard and its merged product line were born yesterday but the company's staff, once competitors and now brothers in arms, face a wait to see what their futures hold.

Russell Hewitt, the former head of Compaq New Zealand and now chief executive of HP, gave up his red uniform in favour of the crisp blue of HP to front the company for the first time yesterday.

He said it was too early to answer the burning question - how many of the combined company's 580 or so local staff would face redundancy.

A meeting yesterday with 300 of them in Auckland showed a "high level of comfort" about the merger, he said. Dealing with redundancies in overlapping parts of the business would be a priority.

"We know we've had enough uncertainty in the last eight months," said Hewitt.

"If we lose the confidence of the people, we're gone."

HP is expected to cut 15,000 staff from its worldwide workforce of 150,000 to save US$2.5 billion ($5.5 billion).

There was no word yesterday on whether the new organisation would relocate. The Compaq and HP headquarters are near each other on Auckland's waterfront and the firms have offices countrywide.

Hewitt said he had not even been allowed to look at an HP lease until now but promised to make a decision on that within weeks.

He wanted to avoid the problems that arose with the 1998 merger of Compaq and IT services company Digital under which the two workforces remained separate for a long time after the deal.

Details did emerge yesterday about the company's re-jigged product line-up. HP will remain the over-riding brand, but traces of the Compaq legacy will shine through.

Commercial desktop PCs and laptops will be sold under the Compaq brand and predominantly feature the Compaq business range, though HP's popular e-pc line will live on.

The HP Pavilion home computer range and its Compaq equivalent, the Presario, will continue to be sold. Both consumer laptop lines will stay in the market - and compete with each other.

Barry Hastings, HP's former managing director and now head of the printing and imaging and personal systems groups, said phasing out one line could see shelf space in retailers such as Noel Leeming disappear to competitors.

Compaq's successful iPaq PDA will remain, signalling the death of HP's equivalent, the Jornada.

The new HP will also do away with Compaq workstations.

A paper outlining the changes to the HP product line-up is available at HP Product Roadmaps