About 100 research and development positions will be made redundant at technology group NEC, while Qantas is preparing for another round of executive job cuts.
NEC says that it is struggling with the downturn, and that about 153 jobs will be made redundant across the country just months after it announced 200 separate redundancies.
The company has already shed about 20,000 jobs worldwide, but marketing manager Craig Norton says the decision has not been an easy one.
“It’s been a decision that’s taken a long time, and it has taken thought and consideration,” he says.
Norton says there are two primary reasons for the cuts.
“The first is that in February our parent in Japan made a decision to bring back the R&D that they had outsourced. Part of that was a team here in Mulgrave, who were focused on mobile technology.
“The second part of it was that we had a close look at what our customers are demanding, considering the changed economic times.”
Norton says that the company will be adopting new internal structures based on enhancing productivity, and will even be developing new products based on cloud-computing.
“It’s really a supermarket, where clients can select the products they want, whether it’s a CRM or something different, and it’s a whole different range, and they can pay based on a monthly payment stream.”
But Norton says he does not foresee any more job cuts for the company. “We’ve taken a great deal of time going through in this process, and the first thing we did was to minimise the redundancies.”
Meanwhile, more job cuts are being prepared for at Qantas, just after the company sacked 20% of its executive workforce.
The airline confirmed yesterday that it will make 90 executive jobs redundant as part of a company restructure that it hopes will save $24 million a year. But chief executive Alan Joyce has told The Australian Financial Review that he wants to reduce overheads during the downturn.
“It is making the business leaner. In my mind we need to be able to adapt faster to the current changing circumstances, and the management structure helps us do that,” he said.
“We are reviewing what we do throughout the rest of the organisation, and that review will continue and be done pretty fast.”
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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