Energy company hires more staff as it closes a call centre

ENERGY group E.ON has begun hiring 500 more staff for its call centres in Nottinghamshire as it closes another in Essex.

Following a review, the company decided to consolidate customer service operations by creating “centres of excellence”.

It means that its call centre in Rayleigh, Essex, which has 600 staff, will close.  A further 200 jobs, in other parts of the business, will also go.

In Nottinghamshire, the company has four sites: Sherwood Park (526 staff), Newlands House (980), Phoenix (775) and Newstead (1,800).  All of these figures include support staff and those working in other areas of the business.

It is seeking another site for the Newlands House call centre because the lease is coming to an end.

There are other E.ON call centres in Dearne Valley (350 staff), Bedford (430) and Bolton (1,000).

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.

“But the fact of the matter is that our retail business has only just returned to profit after years of loss-making and, to ensure we can continue to do that, we have to make these tough choices.

“I can assure everyone affected that we’ll be as supportive as we can during this difficult time and I also want to take the opportunity to thank them for their hard work.”

Wherever possible, says the company, it will look for voluntary redundancies in the first instance and relocation packages will be offered where applicable.  And it promises a range of support services, including individual counselling, for those affected.

E.ON, which has 16,000-plus UK staff, has about 5.5m UK gas and electricity customers, both domestic and business.