Telstra axes 110 staff from Sensis
Telstra has cut 110 jobs from its Sensis business.
Those affected are mostly in the sales arm of Yellow Pages, with some jobs also to go from corporate support functions.
They will leave the business by February 3.
The redundancies come as a result of the introduction of self-service tools, electronic processing and value packages that enable Yellow Pages customers to manage their own advertising.
My heart goes out to these people.
Sensis has been a dying business for years. Everything they offer businesses, others (Google, anyone?) do better and cheaper.
And those big brick directories – such as the one I just got, despite having registered my address on their web site as not wanting one? With pretty much everyone online now, anyone advertising in these paper wasters needs their head read.
Now if we can just get them to cease delivery of those bloody phone books!
I saw some guy the other day with a business name of A.AA excavations – obviously a play to get first in the yellow pages
Remember Sol’s famous words…….”Google Schmoogle”
My heart goes out to everyone effected…very sad time.
If you worked for Yellow Pages and didn’t see this coming a decade ago then you are not the sharpest pencil in the pack. Most of these people probably did see it coming and were holding out for the redundancy package.
Sad, yet inevitable legacy of past Telstra management myopia.
The yellow pages directories are great, without them I couldn’t reach my top shelf or change a light bulb. Good luck and best wishes to all who lost their job.
And the job cuts continue.
Focusing on digital? That’s if they actually had anyone left working in their digital team…
petsy…
I feel for those people who lost their jobs…. especially knowing job openings will be become scarce this year. Make sure you spend your redundancy $$ wisely.
The infamous Sol Trujiilo also said this about Sensis in 2005: “We’re outgrowing Google in Australia. We’re doing more, we’re growing faster and we have more capability, because we’re more relevant.”
And this is the guy who got a final payout from Telstra around $10 million!
Six months after the other business directory had their second of two redundancies –– Truelocal.com.au Read here for the first: https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/jobs-lost-as-true-local-restructures-33379 )
Automation will cause more redundancies, and in turn should create more jobs for Developers. Start programming people!
I’m one of the luck ones not impacted by these changed, but seeing a number of our managers here in sales gone and drastic cuts acorss the board is certainly concerning and needless to say, the office has been very down 🙁
What a terrible disservice the employment agency concerned and the Telstra Board did to Australia did by employing Trujiilo. The ripples continue.
I left Yellow Pages years ago to set up a business building websites having seen the writing on the wall first hand. Ziggy Switkowski ultimately got chopped as CEO of Telstra for trying to sell / offload Sensis as he pretty much though it had maxed out back in 2004 and 2005. He was replaced by the now infamous 3 ‘amigos’ who will be more likely remembered as mexican bandits. Until Sensis wakes up to the fact that it had a monopoly and that regular business plans will never achieve the EBIT levels they require they will continue to fail in the existing market. Sensis, you woke up to late to the fact that it’s about having an audience, not how much you can gauge out of small businesses.
I left Sensis a few years ago. The company was only interested in sales but not so much customer service. I worked in customer service and we were treated like second class employees. The company only saw us as giving back money to the customers whose ads were stuffed up. Many of those customers said they will advertise elsewhere – obviously they kept their promise!!