This article is more than 1 year old

HPE raises 'at risk' flag over hundreds of Brit services techies

Firm still Helping People Exit ahead of the CSC spin merger

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is bundling hundreds more UK Enterprise Services (ES) staff out of the door ahead of the looming ‘spin merger’ with CSC.

Peter Hands, the former exec director of Capita’s IT Services business, now HPE ES UK, Ireland and MEMA cluster leader, has told staff of the latest “Workforce Management” programme for Q2 of HPE’s fiscal ’17 running from February to April.

In an internal memo, seen by El Reg, Hands said HPE 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.”

He said up to “340 positions” within the IT Operations team will be “impacted” during the quarter, and HPE was trying to use “redeployment and voluntary exits” where possible.

Subsequently, Hands wrote another memo, also seen by us, in which he confirmed that a voluntary redundancy scheme was open until 9 February and he spilled more beans on the reasons for further jobs cuts, five years after the workforce bloodletting began.

Hands said ES revenues in the UK had fallen by eleven per cent - but didn’t state if this was in the past year or quarter. He described this was “increasing revenues run-off” and said HPE faced “unrelenting competitive pressures” that are “driving the need to reduce our operating costs further”.

“Our Public Sector business remains under acute pressure from government sourcing policies and reduction in overall client budgets,” the man said.

In the commercial sector it had experienced “global economic uncertainties” that were “impacting client spending” and leading to revenue shrinkage across “many” of the key contracts.

Collective consultation with the UK Works Council and trade union reps started on 27 January. The staff are expected to leave, voluntarily or with a helping Hands hand by 29 March.

HPE is consolidating service delivery centres in the UK, with the ones in Erskine and Cobalt expected to be the last ones standing.

The ES division - which has felt the pain from fewer large outsourcing contracts being tendered by private and public sector organisations - bore the brunt of the company wide, multi-year redundancies.

Next month, ES is to merge with CSC to form a new company, and some staff told us they are already braced for more cost cutting. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like