Dell waves job axe in Bracknell, keeps schtum on numbers Dell is continuing to trim its workforce in the UK, but has refused to comment on how many of its employees have been affected by the latest cuts. The Register has learned that 25 staff at the computer vendor’s Bracknell site will be laid off next month. Dell, when asked, refused to comment specifically on the individual jobs …
Bracknell will all but close over the next 9-12 months. The best employees will be offered jobs in Austin, TX or Montpellier, France. Sad but true... actually, the sad part is Dell won't come clean and this is all being drip fed.
We all need to get our coats - big corporations are abandoning the UK. Only the finance sector will be left.
Dell has recently axed jobs bit by bit in stealth mode. There can be two benefits here: no need to comply with the WARN act in the USA, and avoiding triggering or providing evidence for clawback of local job creations subsidies / tax rebates that Dell may have collected over preceding years.
Dell does actually need workers, but wants to show it is "cutting costs" (pending the PC market going into reverse and rescuing Dell's business model). This is done by outsourcing everything (including product design), and laying off employees even while they are still needed. Sometimes they can be pulled back for a few months on a temporary contract, which of course can be accounted as a "one time restructuring expense", improving the apparent cost savings.
Bracknell was Dell's first office outside of North America. Whilst the current site is about half a mile from the original (and the company has moved a few times since), Dell Bracknell was (during my time at the company) the home of Paul Bell (head of Dell EMEA) and the hub around which Dell's European business revolved.
As the company expanded, other offices gained prominence. The factory in Limerick heralded the growth of the office in Bray (south of Dublin) and a subsequent move to Cherrywood. Many of the jobs in the marketing and home & small business divisions went to Ireland in the mid-2000s. It was a bitch of an office to get to (few international flights from the US HQ left many company execs having to change at Heathrow and then get a taxi across congested Dublin from the airport in the North to the Dell office in the South) but it was a lot cheaper than the UK office and the staff were educated to the same level as the UK staff and all spoke English. For a company run by economics and not an emotional tie to Bracknell a shift across the Irish Sea was inevitable.
Later on, offices in Germany, France and the rest of Europe, combined with a forward-thinking attitude to geographically-dispersed teams saw jobs shift to cheaper locations when possible.
The rise of Dell's Bangalore office saw much of the company's European growth fuelled by staff gains in India where multiple staff could be hired for the cost of one UK staff member.
In recent years, Dell has also seen jobs move back to the company's HQ in Austin, Texas.
The sums just don't add up for Dell to continue in Bracknell and the people I know who've been laid off in the past eighteen months have all received decent redundancy packages and have all gone on to find work elsewhere.
Times change and sad as it is, Dell has found other places in the world more suited to its business model.
They also got rid of 124 people in tech support and some more in sales in Glasgow earlier this year.Also recently more sales staff in the sales site are going to be let go which is a shame for anyone being made redundant near Xmas.The company ismaking money hand over fist so its a shame people will be affected this way.All the best to guys who are affected.
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