Southern Water plans to reduce its staff members by approximately 150 people, within management and support roles, as it looks to become more efficient.
The company is embarking on a consultation process and aims to complete the restructure of the business within the next three to four months.
It said front-line operational employees will not be affected, while those impacted by the changes will be offered full support in finding alternative employment.
Ian McAulay, chief executive of Southern Water, told Utility Week the company has previously been a technology laggard and is now looking to get the right mix of people and technology in a bid to increase efficiency.
He said: “As you start to introduce new technologies and look at doing things in different ways then sadly we will have to reduce some of our numbers and we are consulting on that just now.
“It’s likely that could be up to 150 people, which is not an insignificant number. It’s not something that you like doing but you recognise the need for efficiency is stark and clear.
“It’s not just about people, we’re making substantial reductions in our opex cost base as well.”
He added: “I would stress that the front facing element of our business is not going to be changed, because out in the field is where we need to maintain our numbers and sometimes enhance it to make sure we are delivering the right type of performance.
“It’s always a difficult time in any business. We’ll be offering voluntary redundancy on fairly good terms.”
Southern Water said it is continually reviewing and changing its systems and processes to make sure the company is “fit for purpose now and for the future”.
“Change is ongoing and a constant and, in some areas, we are actually bringing more people into the business as we recognise we need more front-line people. In other areas such as IT we are investing quite heavily. We recognise we need to have better systems and better processes,” McAulay said.
Affected staff members will have access to counselling services and will be offered support with CV writing and interview preparation.
He added: “Wherever possible we will try to see if there are some new avenues that the company is moving into and we will try to re-place people.
“I will insist we will hit the highest of standards wherever possible. You can never keep everyone happy in these circumstances, but we need to make sure we do things properly.”
McAulay believes “almost all companies” are going to have to make difficult decisions with a tough price review looming but he said there are also some “exciting decisions” to be made as the water industry evolves.
He said the company will look at ways of renewing skills in some areas of the business as many people in the water sector are reaching retirement age.
“We need to reinvigorate our apprenticeship programme and I would like to see it become bigger.
“We’re going to be moving into the next AMP and it’s really important a lot of what we are doing in terms of the restructure of the business, technologies and the new types of skillsets that we are bringing in recognise the point of reflection we have reached.”
McAulay outlined Southern Water’s board has also undergone “significant changes” which he suggests has transformed it into a “good, modern framework”.
“The non-executives substantially outnumber the executives and gender diversity is actually biased towards women.
“We’ve restructured the company organisation and we’ve put better lines of defence in for compliance, for example, making sure we can’t be both poacher and gamekeeper in one department because in the past we have had some issues there.”
He added: “We cannot go into the next AMP as an inefficient company. There are no glide paths. The relative efficiencies are clear and our regulators have made it clear what they want. We agree with them and we can see the areas we can make the improvements.
“So, we’re very focused on the last day of this AMP and the first day of the next and we see very little difference between the two.”
Southern Water has 2,400 employees.