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Telstra to shed 200 jobs in latest cuts Lucy Battersby
January 31, 2012 - 3:54PM

Read later.Telstra will shed 99 administrative jobs from its operations division, sending most of them offshore, while its Sensis unit will cull a similar number of positions.

Of the total admin jobs lost, 60 of them will shift abroad and the remaining 39 positions made redundant, the telecoms company announced today.

The cuts will affect support offices in Melbourne, Ballarat, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Newcastle and Hobart.

Advertisement: Story continues below As many as 10 of the redundant staff are likely to be deployed elsewhere, the company said.

Telstra's advertising subsidiary Sensis, meanwhile, announced 110 staff cuts this afternoon, predominantly from Yellow Pages sales teams around the country.

Telstra's redundancies are part of a multi-year company-wide review of staff numbers and efficiencies, dubbed Project New, which saw more than 1000 staff from middle management depart last year.

The project is expected to last four to five years and turn Telstra into a more efficient and profitable company.

"We are sorry for the effect this proposal may have on our employees and if a decision is made to proceed, Telstra will actively seek redeployment opportunities in other parts of the business where possible or provide retrenchment entitlements," Telstra spokeswoman Karina Keisler said.

"We believe these proposed changes can help us to deliver a better experience for our customers through more efficient business processes."

Today's redundancies are believed to be a result of technology improvements which have made data entry and manual order processing jobs unnecessary. Telstra revamped its online portal last year, giving customers more self-service facilities.

"It’s never a good time for job losses and these decisions are always a last resort. However, these changes are a critical part of our program to maintain and build market leading customer solutions. We are focused on supporting the people impacted and will provide them with generous redundancy provisions as well as access to redeployment and job search programs,'' a spokesman for Sensis said.

New online had made it easier for Yellow Pages customers to manage their own advertising through a Sensis website, he added.

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