Originally Posted by
jethro_027
To play devils advocate for a moment, I believe it was 750 individual contract positions that were to be reduced to achieve a target of $75 mil. Not necessarily 750 people to be made redundant. If an identified role was vacant, became vacant or was merged with another role, then I would imagine this would be counted toward the target but not counted as a redundancy. Having said that, the process did drag too long and with some disappointing results, namely some of the talent departing the organisation as compared with what was being retained or worse brought back in. Unfortunately, by the time it got to the lower levels of the structure COVID 19 fun began.
You're taking an interesting semantical approach to what was in essence a hard dollar financial problem. From a cost control perspective two things were important - elimination of roles and elimination of costs associated with the role. Offering up a role that was vacant achieves the former without necessarily contributing towards the latter. In order to save money in this context you need to stop spending it. If you're already not spending it (
eg the role is vacant) then offering up that up as part of the rightsizing doesn't contribute to a real saving.
In any event, Virgin's own reporting in ASX filings explicitly links 750 employees to the 750 roles being ostensibly eliminated. The FY20-H1 interim report states that of the 750 roles targeted, '140 employees' had left as of 31 December (18.7 percent achievement against target), with roles impacting a further '280 employees' having been identified to leave the business by 30 June 2020 (in aggregate, a 56 percent achievement). The report notes that further plans were under consideration for the remaining 330 roles.
By any ordinarily accepted business practices relating to cost reductions that effort was glacial and almost literally half-hearted in terms of execution against a plan. It is all the more of a capital F Fail in that Scurrah had told the SMH in November that 'most of the 750 in headcount reductions' would be complete by Christmas. Less than 20 percent had been achieved by Christmas.
The whole rightsizing exercise is just further evidence, to the extent that it is needed, of the absence of any sense of either urgency or purpose and the abject lack of accountability at the top of the business.