Dell asks employees to take unpaid vacation

Written by IT News on 1:42 AM

Dell, the second-largest PC maker worldwide, is struggling to cut costs in the face of global economic crisis and is said to have asked their employees to take up to five days of unpaid leave. As reported earlier, Dell is close to ending an 8900 job cut program, but is also offering voluntary severance packages and seems to have started a global hiring freeze.

Michael said that Dell via e-mail the move to employees on Monday, but expressed hopes of further consolidation in the technology industry on Tuesday. He encouraged companies to assemble financial bottlenecks by focusing on the hard returns, innovation and investment. "Stunning in passivity is exactly the wrong thing to do right now," he revealed at a conference in San Francisco. Dell also said that the company is working on the so-called "cloud computing to deliver services over the Web.

Jess Blackburn, a Dell spokesman said the company plans to reduce operating costs in its fourth quarter. "The intention is to better position Dell for long-term competitiveness," said Blackburn. "We ask employees on a voluntary basis to consider removing (up to) five days ... as unpaid leave as a flexible way to reduce costs for the company.”Employees are expected to take time off during the next three months.

Dell ended the third quarter on October 31, and will finish the fourth January 30, 2009. Because of the economic crisis, Dell registered softening global demand. The company announced in Q3 that it would focus on getting more share in emerging markets. The computer maker also plans to cut jobs of 8500, meant to help it adapt its activities to the low level of global demand.

Earlier this year, the company revealed its plans to achieve annual savings of $ 3 billion in 36 months. Even in San Francisco, Michael Dell said in the future of the industry is in the clouds computers instead of the local computer. According to Dell, about 80 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will use cloud services in the coming years.

Dell also that the company is working on creating a cloud of its own around IT services, and added that this would contribute to the IT costs down. [source softpedia]