Reach is planning to close newsrooms as it makes home-working a permanent feature for some staff.
The new plans revealed today will mean setting up 15 large offices or hubs, which will be located in Belfast, Bristol, Birmingham, Dublin, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, London (Canary Wharf HQ), Greater Manchester (Oldham), Nottingham, Plymouth and an office in the South East.
“We carried out a survey of all colleagues that showed a majority found home working suited their needs. Moving forward colleagues will either be home-based or working mainly from home with regular office attendance, and around a quarter permanently office-based, working from one of 15 hubs around the country,” stated a Reach spokesperson.
“We’re pleased to be investing in all our hubs to provide more modern, flexible working environments. This solution provides increased flexibility with the ability to have access to meeting space to recapture face-to-face collaboration and a social element – when lockdown rules allow.
Moving forward we will be investing more in our strategy and our journalism and less in buildings.”
It has made the move due to a vast majority of its staff working from home for over a year during the pandemic.
“This is a massive project for Reach plc and we, as a union, understand that our members will have lots to consider and say about the proposals. It will undoubtedly affect them in a multitude of ways – some of which we may not have thought about yet,” stated Mark Johnson, Reach NUJ group chapel chair.
“With this in mind, a one size fits all solution from the company probably would not be the best way forward and we appreciate therefore that the company is stressing that it will listen carefully to the individual circumstances of members.
“We will be consulting closely with our members to understand their key questions and queries. By working together, we can ameliorate any potential problems and issues and hopefully find solutions that work for all.”
