Career change

I mentioned a few months ago that our department at work was being outsourced to IBM.

Our department looks after the logistics side of things in the company, things like procurement, movement of spare parts, building services, that sort of thing. The section that I'm part of, and have been since it was created nearly eight years ago, looks after networks spares to the field. This is the stuff that's in exchanges and mobile phone towers.

When there's a fault, the techs go out, change the faulty part with a good one, then ring us to organise a replacement for the spare they used. We then track both the faulty bit and the new one to make sure they get to where they're supposed to, the faulty one to the repairer and the new one to the spares location or the tech that requested it. We also issue tickets of work to the field to let the techs know where to pick up the new bits and what to do with them. There's lots of other stuff we do, but that's the gist of it.

Well, IBM have completed their evaluation and decided who they think they need and who they don't among the 300 odd staff that are part of the intergrated logistics area that my little section is part of.

On Wednesday we all went into the managers office one at a time and were told whether or not IBM were making us an offer of employment. We were then told not to say anything to anyone else until we'd all been in there. There were a couple of stern faces as people left the office, I myself had trouble keeping a straight face, but most of us were happy at the outcome. Some of our back of house people were made offers, but none of us front of house people (operators) were.

What this means is we'll now go through the three Rs, retraining, relocation or retrenchment. As there aren't many opportunities for us in the company, it'll mean we'll hopefully get our preferred option (for most of us) of retrenchment. As I mentioned in the previous entry on this, most of us have been with the company for a long time and will get quite a sizeable redundancy package.

So now I'm looking at what kind of work is out there related to the field that I'm studying, zoology. CSIRO are always looking for casual field staff and that is one area I'll be seriously pursuing. If it comes to it though, I have no problems going to our local bus depot and asking for a driving job. What I don't want to do is get another office job.