Listed dealer group Plan B has made a number of redundancies as part of a cost-reduction exercise.
Newly-appointed chief executive Andrew Black said a number of employees had been offered voluntary redundancy packages.
“When I arrived here there was an initiative around offering a group of people the opportunity of a voluntary redundancy and out of that there have been a couple of people who have taken advantage of that,” Black said.
“I have certainly now stopped that because, as you can imagine, my objective is to have people targeted into generating revenue as opposed to costs, and some of those redundancies were being offered to people who were, are or will be potential revenue earners for the organisation.
“There are people who have put their hand up and we’re in discussions with them as to whether they still want to pursue that or not.”
It is understood nine of the company’s 20 advisers have left the company in the past two weeks.
Of the nine advisers, it is believed four have resigned and five have taken a package.
Black, who joined Plan B last month, said while the voluntary redundancies had stopped, a company review was continuing.
“Certainly the need around a view around our cost-to-income ratio and keeping those things in mind is absolutely important, and certainly as an individual leading this organisation going forward that is clearly a focus I will keep a very close eye on all the way through,” he said.
“So there is one aspect in terms of looking at the expense line and clearly I think that all organisations, and I suspect this one included, went through an exercise post the GFC (global financial crisis) of reducing cost as a short-term measure.”
He said his key focus was on sustainable profitable growth for the company.
“If there were any roles to be adjusted in here, it would be redeploying into income-generated roles as opposed to being used in support-type functions,” he said.
“My objectives [are] about being able to reweight more equitably people into the growth-orientated [areas], so BDMs (business development managers), financial planners, the people who actually generate revenue within the organisation versus the support function of the IT and those types of things.”
In light of the change of leadership, he said he was working with Plan B’s staff.
“I am spending a great deal of time in working with them to ensure that we have the appropriate reward mechanism in place for generating revenue for the benefit of the group,” he said.
“I am certainly working with a cross-section of people across the group to work up a strategy as any normal CEO does in their first 90 to 100 days.”
