Reorganization leads to job cuts and relocations

An A1 Telekom Austria employee told Kleine Zeitung that he has been working at the company for many years. “With pleasure,” he adds. He has already gone through many transformations, but the current transformation is causing him anxiety. As part of the reorganization, it recently became known that the staff of his department would be reduced. One in six people in the region leaves the company. Discounts that are not a unique selling point. “Some departments are more affected by the reduction, others are not affected at all,” the employee says.

Although the company is trying to “avoid layoffs,” the staff reductions “also create discord among all team members who will remain.” He himself believes that work in the former territory is being outsourced to other A1 countries, “especially Bulgaria.” Technically, it is about things that can also be controlled “remotely”, that is, regardless of location. “It's a shame that Austria is being reduced as a location,” says the Telekom employee.

1,100 fewer employees since 2019

What do they say about all this at Telekom Austria? First, we refer to the Group's strategy of gradually reducing the number of employees in Austria. This has been implemented for several years and currently affects “about 350 jobs per year.” The cuts will be made “across all areas of the company” and in a “socially responsible” manner. This is through “social plans, retirement, natural fluctuations and irreplaceability.” In fact, the number of full-time employees at the group has decreased from 7,625 employees since 2019 to 6,473 employees at the end of 2023. On the other hand, they are also specifically looking for new employees. For example in the field of IT security. They also received 53 new trainees last year alone.

When asked about moving to Bulgaria, Telekom wanted “like many other internationally active companies” to follow the trend of “aggregating location-independent activities and competencies within the group and not implementing them multiple times”. Outsourcing “isn’t going to happen.” As the second largest subsidiary of the A1 Group, Bulgaria has established itself in recent years as one of the centers where “certain functions of procurement, finance and technology are integrated”. In Austria, for example, they want to combine group-level activities in the areas of “software development” or “cybersecurity”.