Regional publisher Johnston Press has announced it is centralising its media sales contact centres in Sheffield.
Advertising roles from the company’s existing centres in Sunderland, Scarborough, Leeds, Preston, Peterborough, Northampton and Milton Keynes are all due to transfer to the steel city under the plan.
It is not known how many staff are affected and the company has so far declined to elaborate on the announcement in response to questions from HTFP.
The move is the latest in a series of major restructuring announcements which have so far seen two daily editors leave the business and two more put at risk of redundancy.
The announcement was made yesterday by JP’s chief operating officer Danny Cammiade.
It read: “The company has today announced a proposal to consolidate all contact centre activities within England to Sheffield. This will allow the Group to create a highly effective and efficient contact centre with new telephony and customer relationship management systems delivering improved levels of customer service.
“The contact centre activities within Sunderland, Scarborough, Leeds, Preston, Peterborough, Northampton and Milton Keynes will therefore transfer to Sheffield.
“The contact centres in Scotland and Ireland will be retained and will not transfer.
“Those affected are being consulted on an individual and collective basis under Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment Regulations 2006. We anticipate that this consultation process will be complete 4 May 2012.
“In the event that this proposal goes ahead, the company will endeavour to minimise the impact through voluntary redundancy and re-deployment to alternative positions within the organisation.”
Earlier this week JP announced it was combining the editorships of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post in a single role, placing YP editor Peter Charlton and YEP boss Paul Napier at risk of redundancy.
It has also announced the scrapping of the post of editor-in-chief of Scotsman Publications which had been held by John McLellan.
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Why not Mumbai? Even cheaper………………………..
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Shocking news
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Life at JP could not be less local these days it seems. No matter the quality of contact centre technology, local business responds to a local approach.
Regional editorial teams coupled with national sales effort will result in less and less control of a papers local identity.
Readers are no longer drawn to ads on most editorial spreads after the first few pages. Ads are stacked with no thought as to the customers needs – nominal editorial filler as well as copious quantities of promos make up the bulk of my local paid-for now. It’s no wonder readers are deserting in droves with good old local advertisers learning the hard way as response dwindles away.
Never mind though – local publishing will be digital first as the new age dawns…except it still won’t stack up. National telesales trying to tick all the boxes at once will continue to produce non customer focused product.
The light at the end of the tunnel… this leaves the way open for enterprising local people to share news in print funded by local advertisers. The light dims though as they are not very likely to challenge authority and local issues and report with any vigour. Bye – bye local press.
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Can’t see this strategy helping ‘Flash’ to secure the debt funding.
Whilst I agree with most of what Ivan says, actions like this opens opportunities if done properly. Hello localism or has that been used already?
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