Philippines Dell demotes dozens
By Juan Dela Cruz

This story’s title seems to be another piece of a bigger Dell Philippines direction-shift puzzle. Events like this raise fears among workers of a looming management plan of Dell to outsource again. The greater majority of the company has recently been abuzz with speculations fueled by events such as this.

Recently, Dell Quezon city Site Director Susheel Bhasin removed all of his direct subordinates, the Project Directors, and demoted them to Account Managers positions. Director Susheel himself revealed that these jobs were shaved because no other Dell sites have Project Directors except in the Philippines, and also due to “business needs”. This move has prompted at least one Project Director to resign upon learning of his sudden demotion.

The shake up doesn’t end there. The movements from above will likely affect those down below. It now seems certain that everybody in the operations management department down to the team managers will all be demoted. The original account managers are now performing duties of their subordinates the team managers, while the ranks of the team managers are now being reassessed to see any redundancy in duties. Some of the team managers have already been removed and replaced with L2 support tech as mentioned in a previous article.

In a recent meeting with employees, Director Susheel has vehemently denied the spreading rumors of Dell being outsourced to BPO’s like Teletech and Accenture. But it seems hard to convince people, when the facts on the ground do not back up management rhetoric.

Could this be a sign of financially trouble? Maybe. To some people, that could be worse!

(For comments and suggestions, please email me at 1delacruise at gmail dot com)