Optus prepares for redundancies

Optus has said that a review of its local operations is likely to result in redundancies, but has not yet indicated how many workers will be hit.

Earlier this month, Optus' parent company SingTel announced a massive restructure that will see the company divided into three divisions: a Consumer Group, a Digital Life Group and an ICT Group, with Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan heading up the Consumer Group.

O'Sullivan remains the head of Optus, as well, with new COO Kevin Russell to be the CEO of the Australian Consumer unit, while John Paitaridis will be the MD of Optus Business.

At the time of the announcement, O'Sullivan said that while the restructure might make the SingTel group able to operate with less staff, there were no intentions to scale employee numbers down at that stage.

However, Optus has now confirmed to ZDNet Australia that a local review that the company is conducting is likely to result in a number of redundancies within the company.

"Over the past few months, we have been undertaking a review of our local operations aimed at creating a stronger organisation with a clearer focus on the customer," Optus said. "Redundancies are likely to result from this review; however, we are still working through the detail, and are not in a position to comment on how many people are likely to be affected at this stage."

Rival Vodafone also undertook an internal restructure this year that saw a number of redundancies in the company's marketing and corporate affairs division. It was reported at the time that up to 100 positions were set to go.

Telstra also announced in February that it would be offshoring over 100 more back-of-house and administrative roles to India, as part of Project New.