Stefano Gigli, SSC’s CEO, has presented the company’s 2010-2012 Business Plan to the Unions.
As previously announced, following an expression of interest from an industry player, towards the end of last year the Telecom Italia Group began proceedings to sell off SSC, given the competitive difficulties encountered on its target market. In view of its strategic nature, the Telecom Italia Group subsequently decided to maintain IT operations in-house and to take steps to restore competitiveness to the division.
In compliance with this approach, the unit responsible for IT infrastructure development, exercise and administration operations undertaken by Telecom Italia’s IT Operations Division was transferred to SSC at the beginning of May 2010. At the same time, engineering operations carried out in-house at Telecom Italia also underwent a reorganization.
SSC’s CEO illustrated a plan of specific actions to improve business processes, upgrade employee competencies, optimally use technologies, and achieve greater accountability. The programme will be implemented through an overall investment of €34 million over the period 2010-2012. This plan falls within the framework of the Group’s Strategic Plan, which was presented to the financial community in April.
The optimization and efficiency generation process identifies that 646 employees are surplus to requirements. This long-standing situation is attributable to:
- SSC’s long-term excessive size and excessively high grades, which underpin its lack of competitivity;
- the overall situation in the telecommunications industry, notably market maturity and a reduction in overall demand for IT;
- evolution in IT technologies.
In order to limit the number of redundancies, the company has implemented a drive to contain the quantity of services bought in from outside the company, as illustrated by the CEO. Mr. Gigli also stated that he had asked Telecom Italia to offer re-employment opportunities in other areas of the Group for SSC employees now surplus to requirements.
As a result of this request, during the meeting it was announced that the Group is preparing to in-source operations that will require the equivalent of 100 employees. The company has decided to reserve this opportunity exclusively for the re-employment of SSC employees until 30 June.
During the evening, Telecom Italia officially announced that it would be creating ad hoc units for managing these in-sourced operations. The terms and conditions for recruiting staff who are surplus to requirements at SSC were illustrated to the Unions and will be posted at workplaces tomorrow.
Rome, 17 June 2010