HP to cut 204 jobs at Irish plants
The cuts are part of a global restructuring programme at the computer equipment giant, which was announced earlier this summer.
In total, the company plans to cull 14,500 jobs worldwide over the next two years. The company employs 150,000 people in total around the world.
The majority of positions are set to be lost from support areas - IT, human resources and finance.
The company hopes to save up to €1.6 billion per year and to enable it to become more competitive in the PC, printing and IT sectors. It will also be integrating its sales and marketing services with its business units, partly to eradicate excess layers of management.
Hewlett Packard’s 4,000 strong Irish workforce has been notified of the cuts, but hasn’t been told which positions the 200 or so losses will affect. The firm runs a call centre in Clonskeagh, south Dublin; a software development facility in Galway; a sales and service operation in Belfast, and a financial services arms and Inkjet manufacturing facility in Leixlip - which houses nearly half of the firm’s Irish workforce.
According to a company spokesperson, however, the job losses will not affect the Leixlip manufacturing facility.
The company’s representatives here also claim that it hopes to keep the long-term losses to a minimum and has plans to rehire some of the skilled staff affected.
In time, an overall rise in employee numbers at the company’s Irish operations is expected.
“The majority of staff reductions will come in support functions with the remainder being made in business units and areas where work can be reduced by improving processes and ‘re-prioritising’ existing tasks,” said the spokesperson.
It is also understood that the overall job losses will vary on a country-by-country basis, with implementation depending on local legal requirements and consultations with staff.
Meanwhile, HP’s global cull has hit its British division even harder than its operations here.
The British arm of the company looks set to lose around 968 jobs, or 12.5% of its workforce there.
The restructuring programme marks the largest number of job cuts at the company since thousands of employees lost out after HP acquired Compaq for €16bn three years’ ago.
The latest worldwide job cuts will deliver a €0.9bn hit to the company initially.
Approximately half of the savings, which it hopes to achieve, will be reinvested into the business to strengthen its market position against chief rivals like Dell and IBM. The rest should flow through to operating profit.
