The telecommunications group Vodafone wants to cut 2,000 jobs in Germany. With a new savings package, Vodafone wants to restructure the group and save a total of around 400 million euros.
With a savings package, the telecommunications provider Vodafone Germany wants to save and relocate around 2,000 jobs. The company announced this today. Vodafone currently has around 15,000 employees in Germany, around a third of them in the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital. This means that 13 percent of employees would be affected by the program.
Overall, Vodafone wants to save around 400 million euros over the next two years with the package of measures. However, investments would be increased in high-growth areas such as the cloud and corporate customer business.
In order to achieve the desired financial effect, not only staff positions would be saved, but material and operating costs would also be reduced, said company boss Philipp Rogge in a speech to the employees. The measures involve, for example, systems that are outdated or duplicated after company takeovers. Rogge is leaving the company at the end of March.
Simplify complex structures
Vodafone Germany has been in the process of change for years. Under Rogge’s predecessor Hannes Ametsreiter, many customers recently complained that Vodafone was unable to keep full-bodied advertising promises when it came to landline connections, for example. Rogge now explained that Vodafone has begun to realign itself and has returned to growth with improved networks and offerings in recent quarters. “Vodafone therefore wants to make itself even simpler, faster, leaner and therefore more powerful in the next two years.”
As part of the “transformation program,” “simpler products and services” will be developed in the future. Costs should be reduced primarily by dismantling complex structures and modernizing network elements and IT systems. Vodafone will proceed in a socially responsible manner when it comes to personnel changes, promised Rogge, who only took over the CEO position from Ametsreiter in July 2022.
Certain manual tasks would be carried out through increased automation in the future. Vodafone also wants to hire new people in other areas. Growth areas such as the cloud business and “customer-related positions, especially in the corporate customer area” are to be strengthened with experts.
Job cuts also among competitors
Other telecom companies are also planning job cuts. Deutsche Telekom’s US mobile communications subsidiary, T-Mobile, is laying off around 5,000 employees. That corresponds to almost seven percent of the workforce. It is said that the job cuts are part of an organizational restructuring.
Due to increasing digitalization, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and a streamlining of the company structure, up to 55,000 jobs are expected to be eliminated at the British mobile operator BT in the coming years. That’s more than a third of the 130,000 jobs so far. Other competitors also plan to cut jobs.