Energy company npower is to close two Midland offices with the loss of 950 jobs as it outsources call centre work to India.
One of npower’s three offices in Oldbury is to close with around 400 employees to be made redundant, alongside its office in Stoke-on-Trent which will see around 500 staff loss their jobs.
A national restructure sees the company make around 1,460 redundancies as work is outsourced to Capita and Tata Consultancy Services, an arm of the company that owns Jaguar Land Rover.
The company said the proposed changes would save on current customer service costs, at a time of external pressures on energy prices.
Paul Massara, chief executive of npower, said: “Today we have set out our proposed vision of how we would improve customer service, calling on the support of leading retail outsourcing partners. I understand that these changes would be incredibly hard for some of our employees and we’ll be doing everything we can to support them over the next few months. This restructure is necessary if we are to deliver the levels of service our customers deserve. All calls would still be answered in the UK. We would have the flexibility to keep call waiting times down during busy periods, and continue to keep costs down so we can keep bills down.”
Npower’s parent company, German power giant RWE, announced plans earlier this month to cut 6,750 jobs across Europe and reduce costs by £840 million.
Representatives of the Unison trade union are understood to be in talks with management today.
