Telstra axes 300 more jobs

Telstra will remove 300 workers from its retail business in the latest of a series of job cuts designed to streamline the business and improve its customer service.

Those affected will be retail division back office staff that support frontline workers. Customer-facing staff won't be targeted in the drive.

The job cuts are intended to "reduce the number of layers" between the telco and its customers, Telstra said.

“The proposed changes are necessary for us to become a more customer experience-led organisation,” a spokesperson said.

New roles will be created as part of the changes, the telco said, but the net reduction of positions would sit at around 300.

"We know this is not easy for the people affected and we will be doing all we can to help them during this time, including making available redundancy entitlements," the spokesperson said.

It's the second time in a month Telstra has confirmed plans to shed roles from its business, and the latest in a series of slimming efforts in the last year.

It has ditched 44 wideband design roles, sought voluntary redundancies from 120 of its network delivery workers, cut more than 200 jobs across its global finance and service operations businesses, and removed 326 customer support roles all within the last few months. 

The telco has, however, poured extra resources into field technician workforce, pledging to add 1000 new roles over the next six months to reduce installation and fault repair times.