Shell plans to outsource 3600 jobs

Royal Dutch Shell is to shed thousands of jobs as Europe's largest oil company joins rival BP in trying to cut costs and simplify its structure. Shell is looking to agree one of the largest ever outsourcing deals in the next couple of months, and plans to reorganise other departments, including finance operations.

The company has said previously that it wants to cut costs, but the scale of some of the proposed changes has surprised insiders and led to the leaking of information to an anti-Shell website by disillusioned staff. The biggest change will be in the information technology division, where around 3,600 staff may be affected by a plan to farm out operations to three companies. Shell employs about 108,000 people.

News that the IT plan is likely to be far bigger than first envisaged has sparked wider concern about job cuts. According to another leak, to the Dow Jones news agency, Shell's financial director Peter Voser has told staff that he wants a "leaner and meaner" department in 2008, a sign that he intends to strip out layers of management. In an interview with Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant earlier this month, Shell's chief executive, Jeroen Van der Veer, said that production costs had risen 65% in two years.

Comments:

DON'T DESPAIR - THERE ARE OTHER IT OPPORTUNITIES!

I'm dreadfully sorry to hear the news about so many IT redundancies in Shell. Having been through this myself I know how traumatic it can be.

However, I also know how many people can use this dramatic situation to their benefit.

Is it time to work for yourself? Let's face it, in this day and age it's not really any more risky than working for a large corporate. Such stability is long gone.

If you have IT support or management skills and you like the idea of being in charge of you own destiny then why not consider a franchise with The PC Support Group?

For more information see www.itbusinessopportunity.com.

If this isn't right for you then I would still recommend considering doing something for yourself. Being made redundant forced me to start my own business and 7 years later I had 50 employees and a multi-million pound business!

Good luck to you all and it really could be a happy new year for you after all!

Kind regards

Phil Bird

Posted by Phil Bird on January 02, 2008 at 08:41 PM SGT #