The sales tally is in and Sensis has recorded a dramatic decline in Metro earnings.
The revenue decline is over double the forecast that Bruce, Gerry & Michelle presented to Telstra last year. Over the last 12 months the Bruce, Gerry and Michelle trio have steered Sensis to lose more revenue and at a faster pace than at any time in Sensis previous 10 years. To create the Boston shuffle of look left to the Telstra executive, the trio this week will reward hard-working Sensis employees with exit passes. All in all Sensis executive will dismiss over 100 permanent Sensis employees in a bid to create the illusion that the revenue declines were ‘planned’ and so too were the reduction in employee numbers. The sackings span corporate affairs, finance, marketing, HR and IT.
However, this is the usual spin coming from the Sensis executive where the trio are merely buying their time milking the cash cow before the Telstra executives call in the toe cutters to audit all and sundry as to their strategy, forecasts and finances. The trio have for years been mis-managing a monopoly where little or no effort was needed to sell ads in a yellow paper book which was the only one in town. The trio have been completely oblivious to the changing digital market around them and are unaware how to react to eroding advertiser numbers due to outdated and ineffectual product offerings and inefficient teams and processes. But the 100 staff who will be sacked need not worry. We all know that the executive and sales staff will be well rewarded with the usual annual bonuses and overseas TRIP no matter how poor the annual Sensis sales results.
So where does Sensis go from here? Unfortunately, it will only get worse as Bruce, Gerry & Michelle continue to mislead Telstra as to the true state of play at Sensis. The revenue decline will be worse next year, over double again the forecast that Sensis has previously reported to Telstra. Once the local and regional figures are presented early next year, the trio once again will create the illusion of planned declines with more redundancies in March 2012.
The 2011 sales campaign has been designed and directed by Bruce, Gerry and Michelle. Any failure this year to meet sales targets are fully attributable to this executive trio. The only saviour for Sensis will be for Telstra to absorb Sensis as an internal division as opposed to an external entity where Telstra has little control or oversight. This would create great synergies as there are many duplicated divisions that exist between Sensis and Telstra. In this way, Telstra will be able to get a true picture as to what’s rotten at Sensis and be in a position to fix the problems before Bruce, Gerry and Michelle sail Sensis into the abyss.
Over 100 Sensis employees lost their jobs this week and I haven’t seen it in the news. What’s with that?
80 in Nov 2011, 126 in Jan 2012 and 220 in Mar 2012
And the bloodbath continues, sadly with the decline in customer confidence and with staff morale in free fall, it seems likely to only get worse…..
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/digital-vision-sees-sensis-job-cuts-to-offset-losses-from-print-business/story-fn91v9q3-1226196019790
http://www.bandt.com.au/news/sensis-axes-another-80-jobs
Among the redundancies, there are some who are told to leave by Friday 18 Nov, the remainders are told sometime between now and Feb 2012. I don’t know which is more painful : the immediate and very intense batch, or the long and uncertain batch. One thing for sure, you are definitely no longer needed. Managers remain tight lipped about your final expiration dates, as though they still wanna squeeze the last drop off of you before they give you that final tap on your shoulders. Upon concluding a redundancy announcement, a manager, which never delivers such messages confidently, this time and countless times in the the past, was caught citing, “if you have any questions, I will answer them as honest as possible”
Well Sue. Hope the mortgage is not big…it looks like the days of cronyism and nepotism, whilst not comiong to an end, will cetainly be harder to hide.
Just waiting for the “never had a result ever” Hoffman to be held to account.
These guys eat their young, now they have to eat each other to survive the gravy train.
Bon Appetite!