Rogers Communications Inc. is laying off about 900 employees across Canada, mostly in executive and management positions, in an effort to streamline operations as it grapples with intensifying competition.
A spokeswoman for the telecom and media giant didn’t give a precise figure for the number of people affected, but said the layoffs represent 3% of the company’s total workforce of 30,000 across the country.
“The goal was to streamline the organization, remove the number of layers and enable quick and faster decision making,” said Rogers spokeswoman Terrie Tweddle in an interview Thursday.
Areas of the company affected by the cuts include marketing and communications, human resources, and technology support operations.
Tweddle added that the cuts have a minimal effect on “frontline” operations, such as call centres and customer services.
“We actually continue to hire and invest in resources, particularly in customer-facing areas, while we’re going through the reorganization,” she said.
The job cuts come as Rogers, which owns Canada’s largest wireless phone service, faces heated competition from established rivals Bell and Telus and new entrants who plan to offer cheaper wireless airtime packages.
Rogers also owns numerous publications, broadcast outlets, specialty cable networks, the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team and Rogers Cable, which dominates Ontario’s largest urban areas.
Rogers announced separately on Thursday that it has increased its stake in Canada’s fourth-largest cable company, Cogeco Cable Inc. and its parent Cogeco Inc.
Rogers says it spent $163 million cash, plus commissions, to increase its minority stakes in the two Montreal-based companies.
The Cogeco cable systems serve communities in an area that stretches from the tip of southwestern Ontario to the Gaspe region in eastern Quebec.
As a result, Cogeco is Ontario’s second-largest cable provider after Rogers and Quebec’s second-largest cable company after Quebecor’s Videotron.
In September, Rogers announced plans to further integrate its cable and wireless businesses to better respond to its customers.
“Our industry is in transition with products and networks converging, product cycles maturing and customer expectations increasing. To remain the industry leader, we need to work and operate differently,” Rogers president and CEO Nadir Mohamed said at the time.
Even before that, Rogers had laid off an unspecified number of employees in its media division last December. Some external estimates suggested that about 100 jobs were affected, including staff at the Blue Jays baseball team operations and Citytv stations, though the company refused to confirm the amount.
“Rogers is, in effect, testing the waters,” Industry analyst Carmi Levy of AR Communications Inc. said of the recent layoffs.
“They’re slicing off relatively thin amounts of their infrastructure to see what works in today’s business environment. After this 900 employee layoff they’ll likely take some time to measure the impact on their ability to deliver services and see if subsequent cuts are needed.”
Bell and Telus could mirror the Rogers cuts within their own operations before new wireless entrants Public Mobile and Dave wireless debut next year, Levy suggested.
“I’d suspect they’re all looking at their employee levels,” he said.
“They need to clean up their house before the neighbourhood changes.”
