The confidential memo, authored by Christine Scammell, general manager customer support, HP services South Pacific, and distributed to staff in the company's Volume Call Centre and Call Management and Co-ordination groups, followed grim news delivered to staff at the support centre in Rhodes in inner-western Sydney.
According to two well placed sources, 109 staff within the HP Consulting and Integration Group, based at Rhodes, were informed that their jobs would be made redundant yesterday.
Speaking to ZDNet Australia today, Scammel verified the authenticity of the memo but declined the opportunity to discuss its content in detail.
The memo, delivered by e-mail early today, was accompanied by a document titled 'Call Centre Consolidation', containing a detailed plan and schedule for changes to the Australian support operations. It read:
"The front line support for the Volume Call Centre will be centralised to India. This is a region-wide activity that is occurring in all HP subsidiaries across the Asia Pacific, including Australia". The support will be undertaken by Bangalore-based Digital GlobalSoft, which is 51 percent owned by HP.
The memo indicates that Sydney frontline support operations for the Volume Call Centre would be relocated to Bangalore by mid-July. Equivalent operations in Melbourne are expected to follow in September.
Frontline support connected with two other HP operations were earmarked to be relocated to Digital GlobalSoft in August/September this year. However, their location and nature was not made clear by the document.
Other changes outlined in the document include the centralisation of Call Management operations in Sydney and Call Coordination activities to Melbourne.
It's clear that HP has been examining the prospects of outsourcing parts of its support operations to India for some time. The memo indicates that outsourcing decision was made as result of an extensive audit Compaq and HP's pre-merger call centres to determine how to integrate them.
Hewlett-Packard corporate communications manager, Hugh Scott, was today playing down the impact of the outsourcing decision. Scott confirmed that a number of positions would be outsourced to India but said it would only represent a small portion of HP's support presence in Australia. Scott, however, refused to reveal how many local positions would be outsourced to the Bangalore operation over the next 12 months.
"This is decision has not been easy to make, given the personal impact it will have on the Call Centre Staff, but we need to ensure the long term viability of the HP Customer Support business," wrote Scammel in her memo.
According to two well placed sources, the Rhodes support operation employs around 240 to 250 people. Hewlett-Packard support operations in Victoria are located at Blackburn, Forest Hill and Nunawading. According to one estimate the Victorian support centres could employ between 100 to 200 staff.
HP last February refused to comment after sources close to the company alleged that managers at the Rhodes support centre been to told migrate aspects of the operation to India within eight months.
At the time the source also claimed that HP was planning to axe an estimated further 200 jobs at the Rhodes facility by outsourcing its operations management centre functions to China.
There are no support operations at Nunawading. In fact there is no HP office at Nunawading. Those sources might need to be checked.