Shell is offering office personnel earning more than €75,000 a voluntary package to leave the company, the AD says on Wednesday, quoting union and company sources.

The company hopes this will enable it to cut the workforce by hundreds of jobs without launching an official reorganisation, the paper says.

The offer has been made to staff at Shell’s training and R&D centres in Rijswijk and Amsterdam as well as at the Shell HQ in The Hague and at NAM, Shell’s natural gas joint venture with ExxonMobil.

Staff at the Pernis petrochemicals plant are not included because there is a shortage of skilled staff, the AD says.

Office jobs

Sources told the paper Shell hopes between 15% and 20% of its office staff will leave. Shell has a workforce in the Netherlands of some 10,000.

The AD says Shell has confirmed it has started a ‘selective, voluntary redundancy’ process.’ ‘This is part of the earlier announced plans to cut our workforce by 10,300,’ the company said.

Shell, which posted an 80% drop in net profit last year at $3.8bn, says it has to cut costs because of low oil prices.