Staff Frustrations Cause Headache for Virgin Media’s Management

The CEO of cable operator Virgin Media, Tom Mockridge, and other members of his senior management team have been roasted by staff this week after a Q&A session revealed a strong level of internal dissatisfaction, not least with the alleged “faceless change drivers” at new owner Liberty Global.

“We are people not numbers,” said one employee. Shortly after that another member of VM’s disgruntled staff added, “We have worked really hard under the threat of redundancy for nine months with very little communication, only to find out yesterday that we are being TUPEd to another company.”

Much of the venom appears to have been placed firmly at the feet of Liberty Global’s £15bn acquisition of Virgin Media in 2013 (here) and as a result of that the company is now going through another phase of internal reorganisation, as well as a touch of subcontracting.

“[Liberty Global] seems to be ripping the very soul (and people) out of the company and everything that was good … about it. There’s no excitement or engagement about what we are working to become … Morale is at an all-time low. Are you aware that people no longer get made redundant or re-deployed, they get ‘LG’d’,” explained another member of staff.

Mockridge agreed that Virgin Media needed to improve its communication with staff, although he also suggested that such pain was expected for a company that is currently ploughing £3bn into the Project Lightning roll-out of their Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial (HFC) broadband and TV network to another 4 million UK premises by 2019. Mockridge added that this would help Virgin Media to “take on BT and Sky and transform the UK’s [broadband] and telecoms infrastructure.”

Tom Mockridge, CEO of Virgin Media, said:

“Virgin Media is growing strongly for the first time in a decade because of the investments we’ve secured from Liberty Global and because we’ve kept our customer-focused attitude inspired by Richard [Branson].”

In fairness such internal problems, which have been laid bare for all to see by Channel Register, are not uncommon among businesses that go through a large degree of restructuring and reorganisation following a major acquisition (been in that boat). But usually the public don’t get to hear about it. We have reached out to Virgin Media for an official comment and are awaiting a reply.