Consolidation seems to be the word of the moment at AT&T, as a report indicates that the carrier will be turning 22 help-desk centers inside AT&T into help-desks at six U.S. locations, according to sources knowledgeable about the plans. This report follows an article earlier this month that discussed how the carrier's CEO, John Stankey, wrote a memo to managers to make sure that their thinking was aligned with the direction that the company is moving.
AT&T is looking to consolidate its 22 help-desk centers into six U.S. locations
At the same time, Stankey is trying to get his employees to return to the office even while Verizon is trying to take advantage of the situation by looking to poach AT&T employees who'd rather work from home. The company, Stankey says, is moving to a "market-based culture" that requires employees to work closely together, pulling in the same direction. For employees expected to be working closely together, allowing them to be doing their jobs from home would have to be out, which was the point of the executive's RTO (return to office) comments made earlier in August.
Similarly, you can't expect employees working at 22 help-desk centers to be as close as they will be once the desks are consolidated into six U.S. locations, if the sources are correct. These support desks are not for AT&T customers, but are for the carrier's employees. Managers will have two weeks to decide whether to move to the six locations or take their severance packages and lose their jobs. Those workers who are unionized will be allowed to stay in the office they currently work at doing a different customer-service job.
However, Stankey's memo could be totally unrelated to the consolidation of the help-desk centers, according to one AT&T spokesperson's reaction. On the other hand, one AT&T manager said that Stankey's memo was actually the incentive that was needed to speed up the consolidation of the internal help-desk centers. Normally, AT&T would be expected to take two years to complete this move.
The same employee added that help-desk managers will be moved to Atlanta; Mesa, Arizona; Miami; Orlando; Richardson, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. A manager moving hundreds of miles to one of the aforementioned locations showed Business Insiders a memo from AT&T to these managers telling them that they will have to pay for their own moving expenses. Such a demand from AT&T might help bring these employees together as AT&T wants. The only problem is that they would all be united against the carrier.
Talking about the relocation of the help-desk centers, the AT&T spokesman said that the move will help the wireless provider. "It reflects ongoing strategic shifts across our call center operations to colocate similar work functions and improve efficiency, consistency, and teamwork," he said.
Compared to its rivals, AT&T's headcount is bloated
Action plans will have to be created by department leaders according to six AT&T employees who work throughout the company. These action plans will include suggestions on how to fix issues that came up in a recent employee survey that was filled out by 99,000 AT&T employees. Even though some negatives were brought up in the survey, CEO Stankey said that 79% of the respondents felt committed and engaged with their work.
AT&T tried something similar in 2023 when 60,000 managers were moved to nine metro areas down from 300 locations in the U.S. AT&T followed that move up with a schedule for employees that saw them return to the office five-days a week, a move that started this year and resulted in a reduction in head count at the company. At the start of 2023, AT&T employed more than 160,000. This year, the carrier started with 141,000 employees. But it needs to make some cuts in order to get as lean as the competition. At the start of this year, Verizon has 99,000 employees while T-Mobile's head count was 70,000.