Telstra to cut 150 jobs from enterprise services group

Telstra will ask 150 workers in its global enterprise and services division to take a voluntary redundancy before Christmas.

The telco this morning announced the redundancy program internally, which will affect Telstra workers who service major business and government customers.

A Telstra spokesperson said the program would not target any specific areas within the business. They said given the GES division employed thousands of staff, the VR program would likely have a minimal impact on the business unit as a whole.

"Should the proposal proceed, we would accept voluntary redundancies across the entire GES business, from areas including sales, products, delivery and operations support. Some areas will be excluded from this process owing to business requirements," the spokesperson said.

Telstra is also currently calling for as many as 200 workers to put their up hand for a voluntary redundancy within its global contact centre group.

The telco has found reduced demand for call centre staff as customers increasingly move to self-service and customer support options online.

"[The VR program] enables Telstra to balance the needs of the business and considers the personal preferences of our people," the spokesperson said.

It is targeting workers in its Melbourne, Burwood, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Bathurst call centres.

Telstra signalled the beginning of a major cost-cutting drive, including "substantial reductions in staff overheads", during its most recent annual investor day in October.

The program comes just a month after the telco said it would shed more than 400 call centre positions throughout Australia and relocate some of the work to the Phillippines.

Mid last year it also outsourced almost 700 jobs to India to help to boost its presence in the region, and later heavily restructured its network application services and enterprise divisions to target growth in Asia.