T-Mobile Announces Future Job Cuts, Front-Line Staff Won’t Be Affected

Just a few weeks after T-Mobile announced the loss of close to 1,000 net job losses in their call centers, the company continues to move forward on their restructuring plans with a new round of layoffs. This time, T-Mobile CEO Philip Humm is working through some “difficult decisions” and that affected employees will receive notification this week.

We are announcing a new structure that further aligns our costs with our revenue realities, enables teams who support our field organization to act and react with greater speed and effectiveness to customer and market opportunities, and better positions us to return to growth.

The new organization required difficult decisions that will impact some of our employees. This week, news will be shared personally with employees and teams who are directly affected by the restructuring.

The full memo by T-Mobile CEO Philip Humm and a second memo by T-Mobile Chief Operations Officer Jim Alling follow:

 

Letter from T-Mobile CEO Philip Humm:

Dear colleagues,

Since the beginning of the year, T-Mobile has stressed that 2012 is a rebuilding year for the company. A vital step in that process was announced in March with the consolidation of our call centers. This week, T-Mobile is taking the second essential step. We are announcing a new structure that further aligns our costs with our revenue realities, enables teams who support our field organization to act and react with greater speed and effectiveness to customer and market opportunities, and better positions us to return to growth.

The new organization required difficult decisions that will impact some of our employees. This week, news will be shared personally with employees and teams who are directly affected by the restructuring. Changes will include some position eliminations and changes to individual roles and responsibilities. It is important to emphasize these impacts to employees result from business decisions. We have tremendous employees here at T-Mobile and we truly wish we could retain all our talent, but our business realities require hard choices. For affected team members, we are providing generous transition support including severance, assistance with COBRA continuation coverage, and outplacement services. As mentioned in the March announcement, customer service representatives in the remaining 17 call centers, technicians in engineering, and frontline employees in our T-Mobile corporate-owned stores will not be affected.

Our rebuilt structure enables T-Mobile to realize significant savings, allowing us to invest in future growth – in particular modernizing our network to LTE, repositioning the T-Mobile brand, and aggressively pursuing the B2B segment where we plan to add 1,000 positions over the next few years.  We gain the agility to put resources where the current opportunities are, grow in areas where potential is greatest, and act on emerging opportunities quickly and rationally.

The restructuring provides a sustainable organizational model, centered on our T-Mobile Values, with the following attributes:

  • A greater focus on driving Customer Delight by reducing the layers between working teams and executive leadership, and shifting and consolidating groups in the field sales regions and the FSC to minimize redundant work – resulting in more effective coordination and communication.
  • A renewed emphasis on Best Place to Perform and Grow:
  • Enhanced people manager spans of control (number of direct reports), enabling faster decisions, more ability to execute, and more empowerment of employees at all levels.
  • Evolution of our leadership model from player-coach, where more time is spent on daily tasks than on planning and guiding, to leader-coach, where time is focused more strategically on coaching, developing, delegating, and motivating.

We approached the restructuring process and decisions with care, rigor and cross-functional alignment. A team comprised of top leaders, with support from industry-leading subject matter experts, worked closely together over the past few months to develop an effective and sustainable structure. We strongly believe the organizational principles we applied are lasting ones. More details on the new organizational structure will be shared in department and team communications this week and more broadly after that.

I want to assure you we will move through the communications this week very thoughtfully, but also as quickly as we can while preserving the quality of the conversations that need to happen. As always, our T-Mobile Values will guide our actions.

Thank you for your patience as we work through what will be a difficult week. Thank you for your continued commitment.

With sincere appreciation,

Philipp Humm

CEO & President

T-Mobile USA

 

EMAIL from Jim Alling

Team,

Since creating our current organization our business has undergone significant changes. In particular, our revenues have declined while our costs have increased. As the Frontline Representatives of our company you know these business realities all too well since they translate into fewer customers visiting our stores and calling our call centers. In order to align with these business realities and to better position ourselves to regain growth in the future, it is necessary to restructure our organization. We will be communicating these changes throughout the week.

Our plan is for you to learn directly from your leader how this new structure impacts you and your team. We will communicate with you as quickly as possible while not rushing through sharing these changes with affected employees.

I want to reiterate that customer service representatives in the remaining 17 call centers, technicians in engineering, and employees in our T-Mobile corporate-owned stores will not be affected by these changes.

Look for a communication from your leaders today with more information about timing for restructuring discussions with you and your team. I will follow up later in the week with an overview of changes to the Operations group.

For now, I look to each of you to do what you do best: take care of our customers and take care of each other.

Jim

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