Apparently Sprints Voluntary Separation Program (VSP) that they put in place is not doing as well as they had initially hoped. To their surprise many of their employees did not want to willingly give up their jobs with today’s economy the way it is and the employment rate being so high.
The program ended this week followed by Sprint’s CFO Bob Brust began speaking publicly of impending company-wide job cuts at the UBS annual media and communications conference. There theory is that a business will fail if you don’t make cost cuts. Sprint executives will be presenting a plan to the board sometime next month with layoffs coming soon after.
Brust was quoted saying, “We’ve had a lot of trouble with the brands since the (Sprint-Nextel) merger because of dropped calls and bad customer service. Sprint believes that as they spend more money recapturing lost subscribers, the company will get back on track. Brust says we will be seeing a more aggressive advertising campaign, what we are seeing now doesn’t seem to be aggressive at all so we will be on the lookout.
[Via MocoNews]
As much as Forsee and his staff under used layoffs the current CEO and CFO will over do it. The current executive team has shown no loyalty to the employee base and I expect that will continue. They have zero history with the company and the culture is now defunct with nothing taking its place. Sprint is now like a ship with a captain and his staff bunkered off in the wheel house with the rest of the crew trying to steer the ship with no direction. Nothing but platitudes and cost cuts from the top but no plan or strategy. The real question is will Sprint survive to 2011?
The stress Sprint has inflicted on its workers, not to mention its stock holders is disgusting. Sprint continues to make decisions that are not logical by any standards. There is NO leadership.
If any decision makers see this message. PLEASE make the layoff announcements. There are so many of us that want to know where we stand and need to make decisions on how to support our families. Just get it DONE.
Sprint bought Nextel on the strength of it’s ARPU and juicy government / corporate client base but then didn’t know what to do with either. They allowed iDEN to age and didn’t know what to do with the hordes of fanatically loyal Nextel employees except lay them off.
And now Gary Foresee wants to rebrand Nextel and try again?!? He’s 4 years late. The customers have left, customer service continues to be abysmal (regardless of whatever Sprint poll du jour they cite) and there’s NOTHING exciting about the Sprint brand! Sprint has no Marketing concept for Nextel and their own Sprint PCS is as if they’re stuck in 1992. Sprint doesn’t have ‘the Network’ or the iPhone. They’ve got nothing left except a sagging stock price and a yellow puff of smoke at the tail end of their ads.
Lastly, Gary needs to stop doing ads in that $5000 suit! $99 per month for a cell phone is NOT a fantastic deal regardless of whatever pipe dreams he sells. Actually, he doesn’t “sell” anything – just mutters about how great the world is today. I’m certain all the employees that were laid off last year and will be laid off in the next few weeks will agree,
Erik – your posting is full of inaccuracies. You reference the yellow smoke…there is some smoke going on alright, but I think you are smoking it! First of all, Gary Forsee left the company over a year ago. He has no plan to reband Nextel, he could give a shit about rebranding Nextel – also, what ads are Gary doing in a $5000 suit? Gary is now in acadamia in the midwest, not making ads for Sprint Nextel.
You are just another idiot who likes to blow smoke when you don’t know the first thing your talking about.
Sad to say, layoffs have been the primary management tool for Sprint for decades. You must understand, however, the primary focus for Sprint has always been to protect the core of a highly centralized, 100 yr. old wireline ompany and bricks-and-mortar environment/mentality. Anything that threatens the authority, credibility or existence of the core company … Overhead Park … must be removed. Too big? … prune! Too decentralized? … prune! Too vocal? … prune.
Nextel was highly decentralized, nimble (sometimes to a fault), and fairly fluid in structure, organization and reporting relationships. Did it do great things? Yes. Did it have problems? Yes. But, Nextel worried about sales, profitability, managing debt, their customers and the employees. What they didn’t have to worry about was owning a multiple-building campus filled with 25000 employees, 50 page org charts (just for Network Services) and generating 30 column Excel spreadsheets that explained how to on-board new employees.
Sprint’s approach to the merger was like prior acquisitions: absorb/assimilate the other company … obviously because they were poor performers. If they were stronger/better, they would have never allowed themselves to be purchased. Was the Nextel side vocal (see above)? Yep. Did they want to be just like Sprint? Nope.
Enough said.
Now that Sprint is puting most of its business sales staff on “Plan” its clear they’re getting ready to announce more layoffs. How will less feet on the street remedy the need for high-value activations?