Telecom giant, BT is expected to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade in an attempt of cost cutting. A fifth of these jobs are expected to be from customer service and taken over by Artificial Intelligence.
This reduction will take from a headcount of 130,000, including staff and contractors, leading to a much smaller workforce by the end of the 2020s. BT is UK’s largest broadband and mobile provider and is currently upgrading from copper wires to optical fibre and will need less staff for maintenance of the network. Additionally, with the progress AI has made, not much staff will be needed to serve customers in the future.
The firm has around 80,000 employees in the UK and this is where the bulk of cuts are expected to come from. Some of the 20,000 employees and 30,000 contractors abroad will also be affected. This move comes shortly after Vodafone announced that it was planning to axe a tenth of its staff, equating to 11,000 jobs in the next three years. The firm reported a 12% drop in profits of £1.7bn for the year to April.