Tag: staff

HPE lets 1000 Enterprise Services staff “go”

Posted on March 7, 2016 by - News

INDUSTRY HP 1HPE is planning to tell 1,000 Enterprise Services staff to clean out their desks and pick up their P45s in the UK.

Most of the cuts are in the Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing (ITO) department where 780 people are at risk.

Staff in the UK were sent an “internal use only” memo on Friday afternoon revealing that hundreds of them could be out of work by the end of April. Of course if you send an email like that out someone is certain to leak it.

This is the second jobs warning at HPE. In January. HP told 166 ITO employees in England that they would be fired. Those at-risk workers are based in HP Enterprise’s Lytham site in Lancashire, and they provide infrastructure services for public-sector clients, including the UK government’s Department for Work & Pensions.

Today’s email to ITO staff is headlined “management update” and was written by Maurice Mattholie, ITO VP in UK and Ireland. It reads:

“I am writing to inform you of the Company’s proposal to implement a Workforce Management (WFM) programme in Q2 FY16. As announced by Meg, Hewlett Packard Enterprise needs to create a more efficient and accountable organisation to ensure a healthy long term sustainable business, with a market competitive cost structure, that will help the company transition to the new style of business.

It is important to point out that we are fully committed to continuing to use redeployment and voluntary exits to manage WFM in the UK and Ireland. It is expected that up to 780 positions within ITO will be impacted through WFM in Q2.

Whilst I appreciate that this announcement may cause concern I am committed to providing regular updates to ensure that everyone is kept informed. Thank you for your continued professionalism at this time of uncertainty.

This comes as HP Enterprise prepares to relocate all ITO roles in the UK to its offices in Cobalt, Newcastle, and Erskine in Glasgow. HPE, which employs about 240,000 people globally, has vowed to axe up to 30,000 workers worldwide over the next couple of years.”

Another  memo sent today to HPE UK staff, Jacqui Ferguson, senior VP for HP Enterprise Services in UK and Ireland, said that:

“In the UK, part of our strategy for Enterprise Services is to move more delivery services to both our Regional Delivery Centres (RDCs) in Erskine and Newcastle and to our Global Delivery Centres (GDCs). In aligning to this strategy in the UK, we have started consultation on our plan for the reduction of additional roles during Q2, with the UK trade unions and HPE employee representatives in the Enterprise Services Business Units.

We’d like to assure you that we remain committed to supporting the employability of our employees through a number of internal initiatives, including re­skilling, redeployment and support to obtain alternative employment, as appropriate.”

Needless to say that morale at HPE is gutted and the fact that the company is doing well now that it has off-loaded its profit sapping PC side means that few could understand why it is happening.

 

Apple staff are inexperienced

Posted on April 28, 2015 by - Fun Stuff

iconStaff at the fruity Apple Cargo cult are starting to show their inexperience at flogging wearable fashion items like the iWatch.

A viral YouTube video shows an Apple genius demonstrating how to use the iWatch to buy stuff from Amazon. But he rapidly discovers that the watch is too small an interface to carry out a complex transaction.

He had done all the right things. He had set up the Amazon’s app with the ‘one-click ordering’ to make it look like the purchase only took a couple of presses of the watch face.

The only problem is that it’s a little too easy to ‘click’ when it’s on an inch-wide screen which you’re operating with your thumb.

The demonstrator says, ”Let’s take a look at Amazon ‘It uses dictation. ‘Xbox One’. So, there we go. Xbox One – I could buy it now with one click.’

‘I am just going to add it to my wishlist. OH NO! Wait, wait, how I cancel?”

Still the scale of the potential disaster is not that apparent yet because Apple refused to supply most of its shops with the iWatch.

Angela Ahrendts has told Apple Store staff that the Apple Watch is unlikely to be available for in-store purchases before June – but they should expect the usual ‘blockbuster launches’ in retail stores for future products.

In a memo to retail store staff, Apple’s retail head thanked staff for making the try-ons “unforgettable,” told them customer feedback had been “overwhelmingly positive” and that the online-only ordering period was likely to continue throughout May.

So at least some of them have more time to practice.

 

 

 

Apple poaches staff to get new tech

Posted on February 19, 2015 by - News

How-to-Poach-Eggs_725x408After years of enforcing an illegal cartel which forced staff to stay with it, Apple is now going the other way and poaching staff in a way to get new technology, a court was told.

Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems has sued Apple for poaching top engineers to build a large-scale battery division.

The Tame Apple Press does not question the legality of the move, but just has become all moist about the fact that the iPhone maker may be developing a car.

The court heart how around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked with leading some of the company’s most critical projects, the lawsuit said. The engineers jumped ship to pursue similar programs at Apple, in violation of their employment agreements.

These agreements are in place to stop big companies like Apple from gaining access to technology they have not developed.

“Apple is currently developing a large-scale battery division to compete in the very same field as A123,” the lawsuit read.

A123 Systems has not been doing very well. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.

The engineers who left were of such calibre that the projects they had been working on had to be abandoned. One of the five defendants, Mujeeb Ijaz, of helping Apple recruit among its ranks.

“It appears that Apple, with the assistance of defendant Ijaz, is systematically hiring away A123’s high-tech PhD and engineering employees, thereby effectively shutting down various projects/programs at A123,” according to the lawsuit.

They are doing so in an effort to support Apple’s apparent plans to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123’s, in competition with A123.”

Apple has been carrying out similar programmes at LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Panasonic, Toshiba  and Johnson Controls Inc.

A123 presented evidence from one of its partners SiNode Systems that “confirms that his work on behalf of Apple is at least substantially similar (if not identical) to his work at A123.”

 

 

Blackberry crush over

Posted on August 5, 2014 by - News

blackberry-juicerThe long and painful restructuring of Canada’s Blackberry mobile phone outfit is officially over.

According to an internal memo, spotted by Reuters. BlackBerry’s Chief Executive John Chen has said that the restructuring notification process and the workforce reduction that began three years ago is now behind the company.

So if your bottom is on a seat and you are reading the memo, then your job is safe for now.

Chen said that “barring any unexpected downturns in the market” Blackberry will be starting to hire staff in some areas such as product development, sales and customer service.

He thanked those who stayed with the company through the process and did not flee like rats from a sinking ship.

To give an idea of the scale of the cuts, over the last three years BlackBerry has lost 60 percent of its staff.

Chen, who took the reins at BlackBerry roughly eight months ago, has moved rapidly to stabilize the company by selling non-core assets, partnering to make the company’s manufacturing and supply chain more efficient, and raising cash through property sales.

In the memo, Chen told employees that he believes BlackBerry is now well on its way to recovery and that he is confident the company will meet its goal of being cash flow positive by the nd of the current fiscal year.

Chen stressed in the memo there was “no margin for error to complete BlackBerry’s turnaround to success,” and he called on employees to remain focused as the company rolls out an upgrade to its device management system and its new Passport and Classic devices later this year.

Axe falls at the Volehill

Posted on July 18, 2014 by - News

Microsoft campusCorporate axemen have been stalking the corridors of Redmond and have so far claimed the heads of 18,000 employees, in the largest staff cull at Microsoft.

The cuts are the first major change made by Satya Nadella, the company’s new chief executive, who said Microsoft needed to be more nimble and focused.

The job cuts are 14 percent of its work force and most of them will come from the Nokia mobile phone business Microsoft acquired this year.

More than two thirds of the up to 18,000 jobs that Microsoft said it would cut will come from Nokia groups, or from overlap at Microsoft resulting from the deal.

Ironically morale at the Volehill had improved since Nadella took over, which might not have happened if people realised that job cuts were on the table.

Nadella has pledged big changes and make some quick decisions releasing Microsoft’s lucrative Office applications for the iPad. And he departed from past practice at the company by making its Windows operating system free for mobile devices to improve its market share.

But Microsoft has become bureaucratic and slow moving and has nearly double the 127,000 employees it had a decade ago. Apple has 87,000 and half of them in its retail stores.

 

Employers rely on staff not to snoop

Posted on April 10, 2013 by - News

snoopBusinesses are placing too much trust in their employees when it comes to safeguarding company data, a survey by LogRhythm has found.

However employees are pulling the wool over their bosses’ eyes.

Questioning 1,000 employers, the cyber threat defence, detection and response company found 80 percent do not believe any of their workers would view or steal confidential information, while three quarters admitted to having no enforceable systems in place to prevent unauthorised access to company data by employees.

And some seem to have all the faith in the world when it comes to their staff with a third claiming they don’t believe they need such systems at all.

In addition, around two thirds of companies surveyed  admitted to not regularly changing passwords to stop ex-employees being able to access sites or documents.

However, on the employees side, it seems not all is well. In a separate survey of 2,000 staff LogRhythm found that 23 percent had accessed or taken confidential data from their workplace, with one in 10 saying that they do it regularly.

The most accessed confidential data related to details of colleagues’ salaries,  with 38 percent of staff admitting to snooping around to find this out, while a further 23 percent said they looked for details of colleague bonus schemes.

A huge 94 percent of those who had accessed confidential information or stolen company data had never been caught.

When asked, more than a quarter of employers could not identify the biggest threats to their confidential data, while 14 percent did not even know whether employees have stolen data – even though they believe employees would do so.

Ross Brewer, vice president and managing director for international markets at LogRhythm, came to the groundbreaking conclusion that this showed there was a “clear gap between businesses’ internal security procedures and the harsh reality of employee behaviour”.

HSBC staff face more cold steel

Posted on March 18, 2013 by - News

axeHSBC is once again grinding its axe ready to chop yet more jobs.

According to the Financial Times, the bank will push ahead with a second round of cuts in a bid to keep to its strategic overhaul plans, expected to be outlined to investors in a few months.

The new job cuts come after Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, to promise that he “fixate on costs” over the coming year. Within this he said he would find a further $1 billion of annual savings in 2013, which it seems is coming from the job front.

Although there is no set amount of jobs that are on the line, it is predicted that around 5,000 staff could be issued with P45s.

This is on top of slashes over the past two years, which have seen staff headcounts drop from 302,000 to 260,000.

And there’s bad news on the horizon for HSBC’s IT workforce with rumours that Gulliver could go ahead with plans to replace the bank’s in-house software and development.

The number of staff working in that area is already estimated to have been dropped from 27,000 to about 21,000. However, there may be more cuts here if outsourcing IT is decided.

Intel imposes pay freeze on staff

Posted on February 6, 2013 by - Gossip, Interviews, News

IntelThings are looking more than a little shaky at the Intel Corporation  with claims of pay freezes and vacancies left unfilled.

Last month the company announced that it had seen profits take a nose dive dropping 27 percent in the last quarter, net income stood at $2.5 billion from the $3.4 billion, a year earlier, while the company’s revenue took a hit falling three percent to $13.5 billion from $13.9 billion.

At the time the company claimed that it was striving to do better and award its stakeholders with fatter margins the next time round, but it seems clawing some of the cash back is falling at the expense of its UK staff.

Sources within the company told ChannelEye: “There’s been talk of pay freezes, while [vacancies] that have been left open for months have yet to be filled.”

Some departments were facing a losing battle as a result.

“There’s also been more pressure on both [sales and marketing] departments to perform better, which, without the right support and staff count has been hard, but that’s obviously the demons that we have to deal with rather than for the top level staff.”

The source also said neither marketing or sales departments were seeing any of the marketing budget Intel had promised to throw at this area when it announced its financials.

This year the company earmarked $18.9 billion on research and development, along with marketing and administrative costs, an increase from 2011 when it spent $16 billion in this sector, and up from $18.2 billion last year.

“When Intel said it would be spending more on marketing last month, I don’t think it really meant its staff in this sector and in sales,” ChannelEye heard.

“I think it was more for its products – namely Ultrabooks – and other shiny toys that would appeal to consumers.

“There’s however only so much we can do to promote the Ultrabook, and feed exciting, engaging info to resellers and consumers when we haven’t got all the tools to do it”.