Fujitsu preps 700 redundancies in NHS IT debacle
Fujitsu could make up to 700 people working on the NHS IT contract redundant, the company told workers today. Fujitsu withdrew, or was sacked, from the £1.1bn contract covering the south of England after failing to agree improved terms with the Government and must now return £67m in fees. It employs about 1000 people on the …
there in ability to complete the task has cost every fujitsu employee 2K already - in lost pay increases and bonuses. fire them so we can all move on and not loose anymore money personally.
"But there is no guarantee that any replacement will take on workers beached at Fujitsu."
As an outsider to the NHS pork barrel, I would have expected TUPE to apply, meaning that all the staff would get taken on at the same or better terms and conditions with accrued seniority.
Ever been TUPE'd? I have, and it did not men any improvements at all. The only real results were (a) a change of Employer name on the payslips, (b) a Guh-awful cock-up over slipping all pay dates into line (some of us were expected to go two months with no pay, beginning of month 1 to end of month 2) and (c) a different set of offsite Management who couldn't manage a piss-up in a brewery but who got more money for taking on more staff.
Bitter and twisted, me? Hell yeah!
These are contractors...they aren't NHS staff, so no TUPE for them.
Did you mean to write:-
Their inability to complete the task has cost every Fujitsu employee 2K already - in lost pay increases and bonuses. Fire them so we can all move on and not loose any more money personally.
?
Maybe you should quit?
all I can do is offer apologies for my grammar, unlike most slackers in the firm, I actually work a full day on a Friday.
If you're going to be picky about grammar, atleast correct all the mistakes. It's lose not loose.
I'm missing my bonus too so I know how you feel.
Unfortunitely it's the same in every company, a small core do the majority of the work and the rest swan about.
Do you people NEVER learn? Your instinct is to fire the innocent, promote the guilty, reward the uninvolved just like every other time an IT project goes wrong.
What makes you think that the people working at the coal face on the NHS program for FJ weren't doing everything they could? Contractors and Fujitsu permanent staff alike. People working for CfH were also doing their best .. people working on site in Trusts were also working their hardest. But when you have an application that doesn't fit, and won't fit regardless of the amount of people who want it to fit, all of the efforts of all of those people are pointless. And don't bother telling me that the same application from the same supplier is working perfectly in London; it isn't, and it will get worse over time.
I think not if the ones I've had to deal with recently are representative.
"Their inability to complete the task has cost every Fujitsu employee 2K already - in lost pay increases and bonuses.
Firstly, I work for Fujitsu on the NHS account and I managed to secure a 3% payrise a few months back. Perhaps you ought to look at your own personal performance as a possible reason for no payrise. It's not just about what time you leave the office on a Friday afternoon.
Secondly, the reason Fujitsu withdrew from contract re-set negotiations is that it was clear to them that CFH would not provide the additional money they were after. Some of the trusts were demanding changes to the system that were outside of the original contract and sometimes even with holding payment to force Fujitsu to do so.
It was nothing to do with an inability to "complete the task" or deliver the solution that was contractually agreed. There were a number of trusts live on Cerner Millennium R0 in the southern cluster, which is far more than can be said for the CSC in the north with their vapourware, Lorenzo.............
Is the 'unfortunite' 'in ability' of (apparent) Fujitsu staff to master basic English-language spelling and grammar in comments here a symptom of a wider problem - one that led to Fujitsu losing/declining the renegotiated contract?
I'd hate to think these commentators are also developers or analysts. These kind of simple lack-of-attention-to-detail mistakes that result in miscommunications are what often leads to IT project debacles.
Thats 700 more contractors comming onto the market!!!
Dammit!!
The gravy train has come off the rails. Anyone with a bit of common sense could see what was going to happen, if you want to extract some cash from the debacle, ok, but puhleeze, stop whining about it now it's over.
Why would BT want to take on any ex-Fujitsu people (except a sprinkling of project managers and programme managers, perhaps)? All get-your-hands-dirty IT work in BT is done in India these days. And it shows.
There is a shortage of skilled IT at the moment if the contract market is anything to go by. Although its not nice to loose your job, i have no doubt these people will find their way into something else in IT. These layoffs shouldn't mean the end of world by any means, for anyone worth anything in IT.
Firstly, all the (real) contractors on the project were, apparently, given 1 weeks notice.
Secondly, Fujitsu employ lots of permies and these will be moved to other projects, or just sit 'on the bench' until someone realises they have been there for too long and force them on a project they aren't needed, or wanted, on. These guys (and gals) would all be eligable for TUPE if someone were to pick up the contract directly from Fujitsu.
Thirdly, going off and rebuilding perfectly good infrastructure for no good reason, other than wanting some nice new IBM kit, and then trying to charge CFH for it, could have had something to do with them getting the boot...
Actually, Fujitsu aren't to blame here - the NHS were over a year late specifying patient workflows (i.e. what happens in the database when a patient moves from casualty to a ward, and what happens if they're unconscious and can't say who they are). Fujitsu couldn't afford to keep employing people who were basically waiting for work to do. Of course, now they have to make them redundant, which costs even more money. Go figure. I hate working for the Govt.
Jobs 'cos at least Apple makes half-decent products.
Well given it was ICL who originaly secured this contract and when doing so TUPED alot of staff, then saying there all contractors is a big kick in the lowends. The impact upon removing your support base who have nearly 10 years experience is something that will be used as a excuse for delays for many a year to come within the NHS and various trusts (sic -sic becasue trust dosn;t == leaving patient data around the place now does it).
All* Fujitsu staff have been denied bonuses this year due to the NHS contract. This affects all UK sites and all contracts as far as I am aware. Some of us were counting on bonuses and it’s of detriment to my family holiday.
*perhaps not management but we will never know.
1) regarding the Fujitsu employees whinging about loss in bonuses
2 years ago, everyone in FS shied away from the account. The correspondents should have put their money where their mouth is and joined the account.
2) regarding spelling in FS
There are more principle engineers/other than there are principals
3) regarding big Government IT projects
When will all these supposed 'experts' learn: Rome was not built in a day. Rome did not even come about as a version 1. Rome was built over time through an iterative process.
No one ever got a fully working version 1 out of the door....
so why does the government and why do these clueless clowns(TM) at Fujitsu, CSC, Accenture, EDS still think they can meticulously plan out a faultless deployment of a brand new solution?
"All* Fujitsu staff have been denied bonuses this year due to the NHS contract. This affects all UK sites and all contracts as far as I am aware. Some of us were counting on bonuses and it’s of detriment to my family holiday."
At least you still have a job.... everyone on the NHS account is in their 90 day consultation period which will probably end up in redundancy mid-September.
You may not have a family holiday this year, but some people are going to be worried about whether or not they'll still have a house at the end of the year.
I agree with the comment about iterative development. If you're making IT software and not doing iterative development you should sack yourself for incompetence.
Amazing that these Fujitsu employees want bonuses for burning my money! - the cheek of it. They should all accept a 20% fine in wages - not a bonus.
Blame the NHS/CfH for wasting our money, they're the ones who wanted more than they originally agreed and without wanting to pay for it. Fujitsu withdrew from negotiations on a new contract and continued to deliver to the original contract, but the CfH are the ones who threw their toys out of the pram and terminated the contract.
CfH now have to find another supplier, who probably wont be able to do it any cheaper and by the time the transtion from Fujitsu to BT/CSC/whoever is complete it would probably have been cheaper (and far less hassle to the end users) just to give Fujitsu what they wanted.
At most companies, if a circa £1billion deal was lost the CEO would go. Doesn't seem to have happened here........wonder why?
