Green Light has made a round of redundancies in an attempt to “realign its services business” and return to its core service lines and capability.
Green Light CEO, Gary Hinksman, confirmed with ARN that the company has made a round of staff cuts.
Specifically, 11 people, predominantly from its Sydney office have been let go. The redundancies shrink the business by about 15 per cent in Australia, as the company has about 70 full-time staff in the region.
“We’ve been reviewing the performance of our business strategy, as we normally do, and as part of our five year strategic plan, we’ve made an assessment on two of our newer service lines that we introduced. Having evaluated them, we decided to reshape them and how we take them to market,” Hinksman said.
“We tried a few new service lines that were different to our core, and we reshaped these lines so that we could provide our customers with a better, more targeted service offering with their needs than trying new things. Reshaping these service lines resulted in a small number of redundancies,” he said.
According to Hinksman, Green Light’s five service lines will still exist, but what has been removed - resulting in the redundancies - are some additional layers around two of those service lines, namely within workforce-as-a-service and advisory services.
“We’ve narrowed the offerings on those again, but everything else remains in play – consulting services, professional services, and operational support services, they are the backbone of our business,” he said.
Hinksman added that this is the one and only round of cuts that the company has undertaken and plans to do.
“We’re a people-based business and we’re working with everybody that have been affected by these changes, both from a support perspective and a redeployment perspective,” he said.
However, a former employee of Green Light who was made redundant as part of the round of cuts claimed that this is the second such round the company has made, and those that were let go came under its services portfolio.
The person, who declined to be named, indicated that Green Light is moving away from its services business and reverting its focus back to its time and materials (T&M) and recruitment business.
“Green Light was actively pursuing its services business last year and within a matter of months, it has let go about 12 of its staff, myself included. We were only given two weeks’ notice and many of those let go were recent hires to build its services practice,” the source said.
“We were told that the reason behind the redundancies was the withdrawal from services as it was not profitable, back into T&M – namely resource augmentation, which it was moving away from but has reverted back to.”
Hinksman has denied the claims.
“Absolutely not. We’re continuing down the lines of our core services capability and there won’t be a shift away from services at all. Our core success platform is around on-demand IT capability and we will continue on this. That market demand is there for it,” he said.
The former employee also suggested that the impetus behind most of the staff that were let go to join the company in the first place was Green Light’s intention to mount an initial public offering (IPO).
“Many people left decent jobs and decent companies to come to Green Light that promised a share listing in 2020. To have it in a very short period of time, turn around and go, 'no, we’ve changed our mind because we’re not making as much money as we wanted to' is not fair," the unnamed source said.
“Obviously, if it is doing things like this, then it is unlikely to do so because it won’t be able to maintain or get any annuity business. I’d like to see them make a public direction in the marketplace,” the source added.
Hinksman responded to the claims, stating that the company still has a share listing on its roadmap, especially as a result of its growth in A/NZ and Asia.
“The business continues to grow across A/NZ and Asia, and we’re continuing double digit year on year growth.
“We still have several strategies around a share listing, and an IPO strategy listing is certainly on the cards and our revamped direction, in fact, will enhance and support that for us because we’re focusing on targeted services offerings,” he added.
