Telecommunications giant BT has announced its intention to cut 55,000 jobs by the end of this decade.
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It is known that the planned campaign to reduce the workforce will affect mainly the UK. This decision was made as part of efforts to reduce the level of expenses of the company.
About 20% of the upcoming cuts will fall on customer support. In this division, artificial intelligence and other technologies will replace the staff.
Currently, the number of employees of the telecommunications giant is 130 thousand people. Executive Director Philip Jansen, in the context of the statement about the upcoming layoffs, noted that new technologies entail big changes. He said that generative intelligence tools that can write essays, poems, scripts, and humanly solve computer tasks give confidence that companies can go even further in terms of change.
Jansen says that AI will make services faster, increase the level of efficiency of their functioning and minimize the risk of malfunctions. Separately, he stressed that the changes do not mean that customers will feel that they are interacting with robots.
Jansen noted that BT retains multichannel and the network of 450 stores will not undergo any transformation.
The company is the UK’s largest provider of broadband and mobile communications. Now the firm is expanding its fiber-optic network and gradually abandoning copper. The company stated that after the completion of these works, it will not need the current number of personnel to build and maintain networks.
Also, new technologies mean that in the process of customer service, the importance and need for human participation will decrease.
Jansen said that following the implementation of the current strategic development initiatives, BT will become a more compact business with a brighter future.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) said that the announcement of the upcoming job cuts did not come as a surprise. The introduction of new technologies and the creation of fiber-optic infrastructure naturally and naturally led to a reduction in labor costs. At the same time, the union expressed the wish that the telecommunications giant retain as many of its core employees as possible.
BT announced the layoffs shortly after the statement that the company’s profit as of the end of April decreased by 12%, to $2.1 billion in annual comparison. After that, the company’s share price fell by 7%. The financial results did not meet analysts’ expectations.
James Barford, head of telecommunications research at Enders Analysis, said the layoffs at BT are mostly due to less need for human resources to build networks.
As we have reported earlier, Vodafone to Cut 11,000 Jobs.
