A week after denying that there would be redundancies following the merger of three of its digital advertising businesses into one, Telstra has conceded that jobs have been lost.
A Telstra spokesperson told Mumbrella yesterday that “a handful” of staff had lost their jobs – later conceding that 20 positions had been made redundant.
The admission came a week after Mark Shaw, the company’s interim national sales director, had told Mumbrella: “There’ll be no mass exodus of staff. Everyone’s pretty upbeat.”
In a statement sent to Mumbrella today, a spokesperson said:
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The creation of Telstra Advertising Network reflects the growth we are expecting from this group and the need to adapt to deliver best service for our clients.
Thankfully the number of new roles created by the new business meant many of the people whose prior roles had been made redundant were able to be re-deployed. Of those who were not able to be redeployed, some people chose to leave the business, while unfortunately there was also a small number of redundancies.
We are grateful to all members of the team, past and present, for making this a smooth transition and look forward to some exciting opportunities ahead.
As Mumbrella went to press, Telstra had not confirmed which roles had been made redundant, and which new roles had been created.
Telstra Advertising Network was formed from the consolidation of Sensis Digital Media, Telstra Classifieds and BigPond Advertising.