Telstra to outsource up to 442 tech roles to Infosys

Telstra is set to offshore up to 442 technology roles on top of 209 roles in its data and AI joint venture with Accenture.

The telco confirmed to iTnews that it had commenced consultations with the impacted employees, most of whom are in its struggling enterprise services business.

"A significant part of the proposed changes are linked to the ongoing reset of our enterprise business," a Telstra spokesperson said.

"We’ve made strong progress simplifying our portfolio, sharpening our focus and improving customer experience, however the complexity of our legacy systems and processes continues to slow us down and makes it harder to deliver the reliability and simplicity our customers expect.

"To accelerate this shift, we’ve proposed a strategic partnership with Infosys to modernise how we serve enterprise and mid-market customers.

"This partnership would support the move to smarter, more integrated digital systems, and make it easier for customers to do business with us.

"If the proposal [to outsource roles] proceeds, some work in our service and delivery team would move to Infosys, and some roles would no longer be required."

ABC News reported that impacted staff had been told to either move to the outsourcer or accept a redundancy. 

The Communications Workers Union's national assistant secretary James Perkins said in a statement that the roles were being “offshored by stealth”.

“To make it look better on paper, the overseas company Telstra is outsourcing part of this work to is planning to set up a new Australian subsidiary, but that’s clearly merely designed to avoid the political and public backlash that normally comes with offshoring skills and sensitive data,” Perkins said.

The union bemoaned the hollowing out of skilled capability in Australia, but also warned of data security risks owing to the involvement of offshore and outsourced staff.

“This is about Telstra handing over the development and ongoing support and management of systems to a foreign company,” Perkins said.

“Instead of investing in Australian workers to design and run these systems, Telstra is exporting that capability offshore.

“That’s not modernisation, it’s a hollowing out of Australian expertise,” he added.

The proposed 442-role reduction also impacts other parts of Telstra, reportedly including its consumer division.

"Across other parts of the organisation, we’ve proposed changes to streamline duplicated work, clarify accountability and strengthen our ability to deliver better experiences for both our frontline teams and our customers," Telstra's spokesperson said.

On Tuesday, iTnews revealed that 209 roles in Telstra's AI and data joint venture with Accenture were also set to be offshored to overseas-based Accenture resources.