Optus Announces Significant Workforce Restructuring: 150 Call Centre Employees to Be Affected
Optus: Major job shake-up at telecoms giant, with 150 call center workers to be laid off
Optus is to lay off more than a third of the staff at an Adelaide call center.
About 150 of the 400 employees at the North Terrace office will be out of work within four weeks, with the telco saying the job cuts will āstrengthen our businessā.
Some employees have reportedly been told that their severance packages could be in jeopardy if they speak to the media about the mass layoffs.
But those who spoke anonymously 7News said they were stunned when the company hired and trained new staff there a few months ago.
Employees are also questioning whether the job cuts are intended to cut costs as Optus faces a class action lawsuit on behalf of 100,000 of its customers affected by a major data breach in September 2022.
In a move that has shocked workers, Optus is set to lay off more than a third of its staff at an Adelaide call center. Call center workers are pictured
In a cautiously worded statement, an Optus spokesperson said the company is “constantly evaluating our organizational structure to ensure it is the right one to meet the needs of our customers.”
The statement added that the telecommunications giant had “recently conducted a review and taken steps to simplify our business, while still investing in those areas that we know are important to our customers.”
āAs part of this review, we are realigning teams, which will impact some functions across our business.ā
In words that will provide little comfort to employees facing a bleak Christmas, the spokesperson also said: “This was a challenging decision, but necessary to strengthen our business.”
Optus said it will look to redeploy some of its staff whose roles have become redundant, with some reportedly having already been offered positions in other states.
The mass redundancies come five months after Optus was hit by Australia’s biggest ever hacking scandal, with private information including key identity documents compromised and in some cases stolen.
Approximately 20 terabytes of data were unlawfully accessed, including the names of current and former customers, dates of birth, telephone numbers and email addresses
Some of the 9.8 million affected customers also had their addresses and identity document numbers compromised.
Affected customers have since filed a class action lawsuit with the firm Slater and Gordon.
About 150 of the 400 employees at the North Terrace office will be out of work within four weeks, with Optus saying the job cuts will āstrengthen our businessā. The Optus logo is depicted