TORONTO – Rogers Communications CEO Guy Laurence will get on to the difficult, time-consuming work of building Rogers Communications into the organization he wants when he presents his much-speculated-about plan for the company to employees on Friday.
Laurence, the former Vodafone executive, used about five months from his official start date as CEO in December 2013 to travel all over the country, meeting thousands of employees, promising all along he would have a detailed plan – outlining his vision to re-ignite growth – to present to the board in May. Cartt.ca has confirmed that plan was presented and approved by the RCI Board of Directors last week and RCI’s 28,000-plus employees will find out what it entails and what it means to them on Friday.
It’s not known at the moment beyond Laurence and the board what he has in mind specifically, but Cartt.ca has confirmed with a Rogers spokesperson that EVP and chief marketing officer John Boynton, and SVP and general manager of brands, marketing and communications Shelagh Stoneham, were let go this week. It would seem the company's marketing strategies are in for major changes.
Laurence has given a few clues over the past few months during limited public comments during RCI quarterly conference calls with Bay Street analysts and during the company’s annual general meeting in Toronto. He said his employee visits told him there is already an appetite for change among them.
Laurence has targeted customer service as a key metric which needs serious attention, something with which the Street agrees. He told shareholders last month he thought the company had “fallen behind” on customer service, relative to its peers, and that it will get better.
One wonders though if the days of offices and desks are numbered at RCI, something Laurence, then head of Vodafone UK, talked about in a 2012 video where he pronounced conventional working, “dead”. He notes in the video that “customer expectations are changing faster than the traditional workplace has the ability to cope with them” and that prevailing office rules are 70 or 80 years out of date. He also says the work spaces at Vodafone were completely redesigned to meet customer expectations. Will that happen at Rogers?
RCI and the rest of us, will find out soon.
