E.ON shutters UK call centre, axes 800 jobs
20 Jan 2010
E.ON, one of the UK's leading integrated power and gas companies, today announced plans to close a call centre in the country, which would lead to the loss of up to 600 jobs. E.ON would also axe another 200 jobs at its energy services business in order to "streamline" its customer service operations.
E.ON UK, a subsidiary of Düsseldorf, Germany-based E.ON, the world's largest investor-owned power and gas company, said that it will be closing its call centre at Rayleigh in Essex, which will see the loss of 600 jobs.
Additionally, the company that employs around 16,000 people in the UK said that 75 employees will be going from the company's in-house IT support teams and a further 125 people from its energy services business.
Graham Bartlett, managing director of E.ON's retail business, said: "We believe that our customers deserve the best possible service and these changes will enable us to make further progress to supplement improvements we've already made.
"That said, the decision to close the Rayleigh site was not a move that we've taken lightly and we absolutely understand the effect that this decision will have on our colleagues who have been affected," he added.
E.ON's retail business has just returned to profit after years of loss-making and the company said that in order to ensure it remains profitable, it had to make these tough decisions.
The restructuring would lead to the creation of some jobs at other locations, the company, adding that some staff would be relocated to other sites, while others were being offered voluntary redundancy package. Individual counselling would be made available to all affected employees, it said.
E.ON has around 5.5 million electricity and gas customers in the UK and employs more than 90,000 worldwide.
