By Patrick Avenell

Telstra has today patted itself on the back for its decision to slash 800 jobs from its books. Although these large-scale downsizes are normally always followed by large-scale recruitment drives, Telstra boasted today that its “streamlining” and “transformation” has enabled this cutting of employees.

“In November 2005, we announced every part of our business would be transformed to make it more productive and customer focused, including a significant reduction in our workforce,” said Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo. “This announcement is part of Telstra's overall strategy and does not deviate from our original guidance.

“We are now evolving into a more aligned organisation that will provide better services to our customers and enable us to continue delivering world-leading financial results.”

Telstra reports that the job losses will be concentrated across Consumer and Channels, Business, Country Wide, BigPond, Strategic Marketing and Product Management.

In a moment of unapologetic grandiose boasting, Trujillo then enthused about how successful this process of transformation has been, and how satisfying it is to celebrate this achievement by letting go of almost 1,000 staff members.

“After a tremendously successful incubation period at BigPond in recent years, and as a result of the processes and tools introduced as part of the transformation, we can now integrate BigPond's access business with the rest of Telstra,” said Trujillo.