As COVID-19 puts a dent on its advertising revenue, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) will restructure its sales and magazine operations as part of a transformation roadmap. The number of staff the local media giant will let go as it does that – about 140.
SPH made the announcement on 18 August 2020.
The affected staff are all from the company’s media solutions division (MSD) and SPH Magazines – about five per cent of SPH’s overall headcount.
According to SPH, it informed the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the Creative Media and Publishing Union (CMPU) and NTUC in advance before carrying out the exercise.
SPH and CMPU have also negotiated and agreed on the compensation retrenched staff will receive.
According to CMPU President David Teo, the union worked closely with SPH management to ensure the exercise was conducted within the guidelines stipulated in NTUC’s Fair Retrenchment Framework, as well as the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower and Responsible Retrenchment.
CMPU and SPH management also jointly reviewed the selection criteria to ensure that the Singaporean core is safeguarded as far as possible.
“Today is a tough day for the employees affected by SPH’s restructuring exercise and our CMPU union leaders are giving them our strong support … CMPU’s key priority in such an event is to stand by our members, protect their interests and ensure that they are treated with dignity.
“CMPU will continue to engage SPH, as well as our partner NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute), to provide necessary support to the affected employees during this period of career transition,” said Mr Teo.
The streamlining of operations led to the redundancy of some roles, said SPH.
The company started a review of its media business in 2019 to provide advertisers with more effective marketing solutions by adopting an integrated sales approach across its different platforms and titles.
Another way it streamlined was by intensifying its efforts to share content resources across its print, digital and voice platforms.
SPH CEO Ng Yat Chung said: “Subscriptions and readership of our news titles have increased since the onset of COVID-19. However, the economic downturn has significantly impacted our advertising revenue.
“A more integrated approach of producing and selling our content across our various platforms will allow us to deal more efficiently and effectively with the new level of demand we are seeing from our advertisers and audience.”
This announcement follows a series of grim announcements by the media company.
Since the crisis, the company has reviewed its costs, cut back on discretionary spending and instituted pay cuts for senior management.
In March this year, SPH CEO and directors took voluntary 10 per cent pay cuts, while senior management took a 5 per cent pay cut.
SPH had earlier restructured and streamlined its operations in October 2019, cutting some 5 per cent of jobs in its media division, affecting some 130 employees. Among the group, about 70 were retrenched, while others did not have their contracts renewed or went on early retirement.
