HP To Cut 30,000 Jobs In Enterprise Unit

Hewlett-Packard is once again taking the axe to its workforce, with its enterprise business unit expected to lose between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs.

The job cuts come on top of the 55,000 workers already made redundant at the computing giant, before it splits itself later this year into two separate entities; one focused on its computer and printer business (HP Inc) and the other on its hardware and service operations (Hewlett Packard Enterprise).

New redundancies

The latest tranche of job cuts were announced by chairman and CEO Meg Whitman, speaking to investors on Tuesday.

“These restructuring activities will enable a more competitive, sustainable cost structure for the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise,” said Whitman. “We’ve done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring.”

The company has more than 300,000 employees, and the latest job cuts means that HP is cutting a further 10 percent of its workforce.

The job cuts are expected to be completed by the end of October and are part of efforts to reduce costs at HP by $2 billion (£1.3bn) per year. It was unclear at this stage the impact these cuts will have on UK staff.

And the latest tranche of job cuts does not include previous job cuts at the computing giant.

Ongoing Pain

HP under the leadership position of Whitman has a track record of making ongoing jobs cuts.

Indeed, Whitman’s latest statement about these “final actions eliminating the need for any future corporate restructuring” may ring a little hollow for some, when HP’s corporate restructuring track record is examined.
In May 2012, after months of rumours, HP announced it would axe 27,000 jobs, as part of its “2012 Plan”. Then in September 2012, the company increased the number of positions to go to 29,000 staff.

But that wasn’t enough. In December 2012 it said it would axe a total of 34,000 jobs. And then in May 2014, it decided that still wasn’t enough, and the company announced yet more redundancies, with another 16,000 jobs axed.

Fast forward a couple of months, and HP said it would axe a further 5,000 workers in October 2014, pushing its workforce reduction to a grand total of 55,000 jobs. And now with the decision to cut another 30,000 positions, it means that HP will have axed up to 80,000 jobs since 2012.

“The number is sadly larger than some people might have expected, but I think it’s a reflection of how much trouble HP has been having with its services,” Charles King, president and principal analyst of Pund-IT, was quoted by Reuters as saying.

“I’m frankly not sure if HP is finished with the layoffs,” King added, saying he expects the job cuts and the shuffling of people and positions to continue well into 2016.

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