Seems to me every firm is like this. Their computers etc are working so they think why do we need these people? and when the **** hits the fan and they are left wondering why they got rid of the people who maintained and fixed them and then they have to hire new people. Its a false economy.

Norwich Union have always had apolicy of hire and fire, one year they take on 500 people and the next year 500 go.

crazy, Norwich union suck they tried to charge me £1200 for my car insurance because it has 19" wheels on it which is classed as a modification whears as swinton want £350 now who do you think I went with?

Back to topic

To be fair to NU/Aviva - this sounds more like the truth than other "we are more efficient" lay-offs recently.

I spoke to one of the IT bods from Aviva (I am employed in IT for a financial services company) in the middle of last year, he sent me a copy of press email that went out. Said they were very proud to have cut the number of separate systems in use from 550ish to about 350!

Aviva bought a ton of other companies and never seemed to successfully integrate them, there service is truly awful and it normally comes down to the staff not being able to see what is going on. They were the last company to sort out sending data to our back office system, which is terrible considering they are one of the biggest.

Cutting jobs, yet I wonder what the cost of their recent ad campaign with "Walter" Willis etc amounted to...