The job cuts were confirmed by the British telecommunications company through its financial results for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2023

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BT Group to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade. (Credit: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland/Wikimedia Commons)

BT Group has revealed plans to reduce its global workforce by shedding up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade as a part of the company’s key transformation metrics for a simplified structure and reduced cost base.

The job cuts were confirmed by the British telecommunications company through its fourth quarter financial results for the fiscal year 2023. For the fiscal year 2023, BT earned revenue of £20.7bn, which is 1% lower than the revenue of the previous year.

The telecommunications major will reduce its total labour resources from 130,000 to 75,000-90,000 by the financial year 2028-2030.

BT Group’s total headcount includes both staff directly employed by the company and non-employees supplied by a third party.

According to various media reports, up to a fifth of the proposed job cuts will come in customer services as employees are expected to be replaced by technologies including artificial intelligence (AI).

Besides, the firm expects that once its fibre-optic broadband and 5G mobile networks are fully operational, it would not require as many employees to build and maintain them.

BT Group chief executive Philip Jansen said: “In Consumer we’re delivering for customers with strong growth in FTTP and 5G, and we’re also seeing green shoots in B2B with a return to revenue growth in the final quarter in Global and the creation of our newly integrated Business unit.

“By continuing to build and connect like fury, digitise the way we work and simplify our structure, by the end of the 2020s BT Group will rely on a much smaller workforce and a significantly reduced cost base. New BT Group will be a leaner business with a brighter future.”

Earlier this week, BT’s rival telecom firm Vodafone Group announced plans to reduce its global workforce by laying off 11,000 employees over the next three years.

Vodafone’s job cuts are part of a new roadmap drawn after a strategic review held over the past five months.