T-Mobile in March said that the company was looking to restructure and in doing so, it cut 5% of its workforce while closing seven call centers. Now, in a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm said the carrier will begin a “new structure” plan that will involve some difficult decisions. “Changes will include some position eliminations and changes to individual roles and responsibilities,” the executive wrote. While no specific details were provided in the note, the letter clearly suggests layoffs are coming to the troubled wireless company in the coming weeks. Humm’s memo follows below in its entirety.
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
[Via The Verge]
