Up to 30 newspaper staff are under threat of redundancy as a regional publisher prepares to outsource some of its design work to India.
HTFP understands Archant staff were told yesterday that the vast majority of newspaper advertising design work would be carried out abroad.
It is believed around seven of the designers affected are based in Weston-super-Mare, while the rest work out of the company’s head office in Norwich.
A consultation has now begun with the staff affected.
A company spokeswoman said: “Archant can confirm that, as part of a review of its newspaper advertising design services, it has started a consultation process with affected staff.”
The announcement comes after Archant unveiled a shake-up of its content operation in November, which could see the loss of up to 57 jobs and the creation of 40 new roles.
The restructure proposed separating the design and production of the company’s newspapers from the content creation function, with a centralised production unit in Norwich responsible for all print titles.
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Regional paper axes local workforce for cheap foreign labour. That’s the way to get the community onside.
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Soon there’ll be no one left in the building on the hill and with commercial teams moved into there from elsewhere to save money surely the next step will be a move to remote working for ad reps or like the content these days a reliance on advertiser supplied copy and no need for commercial staff at all.
The cull of staff continues while the laughable aim to be the best looking more and more like wishful thinking
comisetations with the 30 affected, good luck to the reps who’ll have to lisise for copy with a setter in another continent
“Life’s local”
Not at Archant it isn’t
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You’ll be sorry, or the readers will.
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This latest shocking move proves they have no interest in the local community Citizen and as far as readers go there aren’t enough to worry about Paperboy
The only ones losing out will be the 30 about to face the axe and the poor old ad people who’ll have to try and work with production workers based the other side of the world producing bog standard ad designs from the 1980s
Nice one matey!
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It’s hard to believe they’ll be able to pay Indian workers less than the salaries offered for their recently advertised “print journalist” positions.
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Local World used typesetters and designers from India and the quality is VERY poor (also seen other outsourced work at other companies and the quality is generally poor unless they use the top companies) Usually the use the cheap services as all the fat cat managers see they can pay about £2.50 (or less!) for advert. Sadly Archant pay laughable wages (up to £18,500 for talented designers)
Instead of culling the hard working staff at the bottom of the food chain, its time to cull the fat cat upper management who just drive the company into the ground.
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@norfolk n good
They won’t have to, I believe the going rate for turning round a basic template ad design is in the region of 1-7p per ad, this is all about getting the job done on the cheap, there’ll be no salaries to pay so they’ll have cut their wage bill by 30 less FTEs
A Desperate measure and a loud clear message to the good people of Norfolk that they’re not interested in supporting the local economy unless it suits them financially to do so
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Employee x is correct
Archant will be able to get rid of 30 ad production staff and their salaries in favour of using an Indian consent and paying x per advert,they won’t be moving their ad production side to India, simply using a company who churns these dated looking stock adverts out at low cost to publishers who’s priority is cost not quality
I’m just surprised the editor hasn’t come out with one of his usual ‘this is exciting news for you’ pieces
My how the mighty have fallen and continue to fall further
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Some very good ad pro guys about to be shown the door all because the bean counters want to cut costs and save salaries even though this will dumb down the quality of the adverts and papers to a very basic level,
it won’t matter to the ones making the decisions because they’ll be long gone when their axe weilding is done,far better to review who’s doing what in the advert department which is full to over flowing with paper shuffling ad managers producing nothing yet on high salaries so could easily be pruned out to save real costs with no effect on the business whatsoever,until then it’s one rule for edit snd adpro and another for the ad department.
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Local news is probably the only business that offers free ad production/design so those in charge think it makes sense to see this as an area to cut costs.
Problem is, ad design is literally the end product for the advertisers, the customer. Any hit in quality or process is going to be immediately seen my the local businesses.
Most UK companies who outsourced in the 90’s and 00’s are now in-sourcing ASAP as they realise that quality and local resource matter.
This is also going to make our lives a nightmare as we go back and forth with design issues.
Cust cutting these days is automation and technology not outsourcing.
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ShinySuit
The reality is they couldn’t care less about quality if can get it done cheaper elsewhere, they’re not the ones having to explain this to the customer,you are
And yes the managers will pay lip service and nod in all the right places ( that’s how they got their jobs) telling you it makes sense and the quality will be fine ,but if it saves them 23/30 salaries to them it’s a good move.
Good luck with the email proofs at breakfast and the email tennis trying to get it right
More work, less staff = ££££££££
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I’ve been told “no one advertisers in newspapers because digital is the future” this is not 100% true. After Local World was formed, about 6 months later we saw some advertisers stop advertising due to the quality of the outsourced production adverts. (There was some funny typos in their ads!) As a very small team of designers in the UK (our team was 7 at one point) we couldn’t do every advert and we wouldn’t touch small typesetting adverts as we focused on the larger costing adverts)
A couple of recent posts are sadly right, the one making the decisions will move on, leaving a mess in their wake (seen this at LW) and companies that outsourced in the 90’s and 00’s are bring roles back to the UK. I hate contacting Virgin Media’s IT customer support as they still use really bad outsourced IT (their knoweldge limit is turn it off then on again) and to get it fixed I always have go to disconnections and you get someone in the UK.
Best of luck to people who are going to get axed, if Archant offer you a job its probably going to be terrible supporting the outsourced production.
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Such a shame that so many of us who actually speak to the customers daily are just ignored (we get lip service), we have ideas you know. It’s seems the management that makes the decisions are stuck in a past.
To try and give some justice to those at the top, it’s close to that time of year when targets have to be hit and promising a big ££££ saving is really all they want to hear. Outsourcing is an easy option, good for the balance books but bad for the remaining staff, the customers and the readers.
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Shiny suit
We’ve been fed in a diet of lip service and no questions asked or you’ll be marked as being negative so we are used to it, the commercial managers go along with anything thrown their way for the same reason and yes if those doing the customer facing work were consulted to seek a view or opinion many of the car crash policies we are suffering with would never have happened.
Yes year end is looming and it’s all about quick fix revenue grabs to make the books look less embarrassing so expect more of the same
Good luck with keeping what few advertisers remain, those who’ve not been locked into an annual cheapo cheapo deal, once they see the Indian template ad designs you won’t have too many to worry about
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