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BT: Job cuts on the way?
Middle-management watch out...

By David Meyer

Published: Friday 02 November 2007

BT is to announce a number of job losses when it issues its latest financial results next week.

A report in The Times last Thursday suggested there will be thousands of job cuts, although the company is refusing to specify numbers ahead of the results.

The cuts will come as the result of a major restructuring drive announced in April. As part of the drive, two new units - BT Design and BT Operate - were created. It's part of BT's ongoing mission to morph from a telecoms company into an IT services provider.

When the restructuring was announced, a BT spokesperson told silicon.com's sister site ZDNet.co.uk it would "entail no redundancies and no job cuts". However, another spokesperson said on Thursday the reorganisation was "always going to entail job losses".

The spokesperson said: "We said no-one would be forced out of a job. We have made very attractive packages available and quite a lot of people have said they would retire early. This has all been done with the unions and on good terms with those people who have chosen [to] leave."

The article in The Times quoted Citigroup analysts as saying the cuts could account for £230m of the £450m cost of the reorganisation.

One significant figure who is definitely leaving is Andy Green. In April, Green was tasked with overseeing BT Design and BT Operate. He starts as head of services company LogicaCMG at the beginning of next year. BT's spokesperson denied Green's departure was in any way related to the cuts.

The spokesperson suggested the majority of job losses would occur in the middle-management layer, in cases where the formation of the new units would remove previous duplication of roles.

The spokesperson said other divisions, such as BT Openreach, had recently been recruiting more staff and even claimed next week's results might show the company had grown overall.

David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK