Major home-care service provider Comsn Co. announced Thursday that it plans to cut about 1,000 jobs, or about one-quarter of its workforce, due to weaker-than-expected earnings from services covered by the newly launched public nursing-care insurance.
Comsn said the job cuts will affect managers and part-timers but will exclude frontline home-care helpers.
The firm said it will also revamp its nationwide network of customer bases by closing some 200 of the nearly 1,200 bases it opened before the April 1 launch of the new system, and scale back others.
The restructuring reflects consumers' preference for relatively unprofitable services, the company said.
It received an average of 64,000 yen in fees per customer as of April 30, far below the projected 97,000 yen, it said.
Masahiro Origuchi, president of Comsn, blamed the poor earnings on demand that was weak despite the start of the new public nursing-care insurance scheme.
The affiliate of the major human-resource business Goodwill Group Inc. spent some 3 billion yen over three months on ads in hopes of expanding its business.
Employees at customer bases to be closed or scaled down will be asked to resign voluntarily, but will be sacked if they refuse.