DLA Piper is making 200 UK staff redundant.
18% of the firm's 1,100 UK business support staff are set to lose their jobs, with redundancies to be made across its IT, Finance, HR, Marketing & BD and Secretarial teams.
Some of the work they do will be automated, while the remainder is to be transferred to DLA's global service centre in Warsaw. In many respects, the writing has been on the wall since the firm opened its low-cost Polish centre in December 2015, when it piloted the global business services approach.
It's a grim day at the firm's UK offices, where staff were told of the impending consultation this morning. It begins on 31 May and will be completed by the end of July, at which point 200 staff will have to find new jobs. They are expected to leave their roles between October and next July.
DLA has received criticism in the past for providing only statutory minimum packages to those it makes redundant. However the firm has told RollOnFriday that this time, staff will receive an "enhanced" package, which will be nailed down in discussions with their employee representatives. DLA also said it would offer "career support" to potentially affected staff (though sadly not the kind of career support that involves continuing to provide them with a career).
COO Andrew Darwin said that the firm's rapid growth meant that "many of our systems and processes reflect the history of the firm rather than its future". He said a key part of DLA's strategy was to modernise its business service functions "in order to operate more effectively on a global basis and improve the quality, consistency and efficiency of the way we deliver our services to our clients".
Darwin added that, "Until the consultation is completed, we will not be making any final decisions, and we will be actively supporting our people during this process".
Tip Off ROF
18% of the firm's 1,100 UK business support staff are set to lose their jobs, with redundancies to be made across its IT, Finance, HR, Marketing & BD and Secretarial teams.
Some of the work they do will be automated, while the remainder is to be transferred to DLA's global service centre in Warsaw. In many respects, the writing has been on the wall since the firm opened its low-cost Polish centre in December 2015, when it piloted the global business services approach.
It's a grim day at the firm's UK offices, where staff were told of the impending consultation this morning. It begins on 31 May and will be completed by the end of July, at which point 200 staff will have to find new jobs. They are expected to leave their roles between October and next July.
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They stay over there, they take our jobs |
DLA has received criticism in the past for providing only statutory minimum packages to those it makes redundant. However the firm has told RollOnFriday that this time, staff will receive an "enhanced" package, which will be nailed down in discussions with their employee representatives. DLA also said it would offer "career support" to potentially affected staff (though sadly not the kind of career support that involves continuing to provide them with a career).
COO Andrew Darwin said that the firm's rapid growth meant that "many of our systems and processes reflect the history of the firm rather than its future". He said a key part of DLA's strategy was to modernise its business service functions "in order to operate more effectively on a global basis and improve the quality, consistency and efficiency of the way we deliver our services to our clients".
Darwin added that, "Until the consultation is completed, we will not be making any final decisions, and we will be actively supporting our people during this process".
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That said - the impact of these jobs on the overall cost of fees is minimal. and banks et al won't see the chargeout rates dropping by 05%. The firms demonstrate keen cost awareness in offshoring backoffice services, and then the partners trouser those savings.
Law firms are very short termist, as partners today reap the cost/savings in the next financial year. The management has decided that they can increase PEP by (say) £3000, (1/2 of which is taxed) at the cost of more than a thousand people.
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Today I advise large firms for their IT services and DLA like all these greedy firms are going to spend an absolute fortune for this transfer of their global services to another country (which is not a English speaking place by the way). Many muppets are going to be very well paid during the project, senior management are going to fly to Poland all the time and in about 1 to 3 years, the firm will rehire staff in UK. The same palaver did happen indeed with many banks when they offshored everything to India.
Over 3 years, there are no savings in fact.
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Is this actually a law firm?
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The progress of DLA Piper is a staggering achievement.
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