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Less than one month after getting the full position, CEO Margherita Della Valle said the company’s performance ‘has not been good enough’.
Vodafone has joined the wave of tech companies reducing their workforce, with plans to cut 11,000 jobs globally to become a “leaner and simpler organisation”.
The company’s new CEO Margherita Della Valle made the announcement today (16 May) and said Vodafone’s performance “has not been good enough”. The announcement came with Vodafone’s preliminary financial year results, in which the telecoms company experienced a performance slowdown.
“My priorities are customers, simplicity and growth,” Della Valle said. “We will simplify our organisation, cutting out complexity to regain our competitiveness.
“We will reallocate resources to deliver the quality service our customers expect and drive further growth from the unique position of Vodafone Business.”
The 11,000 jobs will be cut over three years and will include “both HQ and local markets simplification”. The telecoms company employs more than 100,000 people worldwide.
It is unclear if Irish staff will be impacted by the job cuts, but RTÉ reports that the company’s Irish-based workforce will not be affected. In 2018, Vodafone said it employed more than 2,000 people directly and indirectly in Ireland.
Della Valle had been serving as interim CEO since the start of 2023, after former CEO Nick Read stepped down from the position last December. She was appointed the full title last month as she impressed the company’s board with her efforts to transform the company.
Her announcement comes as Vodafone reported a 1.3pc drop in its adjusted earnings for the financial year, earning roughly €14.7bn.
The report highlights some of the key changes Della Valle has planned for the company, such as refocusing “on the basics” to deliver a “simple and predictable experience” for customers.
The report claims Vodafone is “more complex than we need to be, which limits our commercial agility”.
Earlier this month, LinkedIn announced another wave of layoffs from its global workforce, along with plans to wind down InCareer, its local job finding app in China.
E-commerce giant Shopify also announced plans to cut 20pc of its global workforce, to prepare for a decade of “high velocity and massive change”.
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