Telecoms equipment specialist Ericsson has warned employees in its home country of Sweden that around 1,550 redundancies are planned across all job areas. The move is part of the company’s drive to reduce costs and improve operational effectiveness. Over 17,700 people are currently employed in Ericsson’s Swedish sites.
Tomas Qvist, head of Ericsson’s Human Resources in Sweden, said “It is naturally a difficult message for our employees in Sweden. We must ensure that we can continue to execute on our strategy to maintain our market leadership, invest in R&D and meet our customers’ needs. To secure this we need to focus on reducing cost, driving commercial excellence and operational effectiveness. This will enable us to secure our future competitiveness. Over the past couple of years we have been continuously driving these global efficiency measures across regions and units. And, sometimes redundancies are unfortunately inevitable.”
Ericsson says the number of consultants and temporary workforce will also be substantially reduced. It currently employs more than 100,000 people worldwide.