BT to cut up to 55,000 jobs by end of decade and replace a fifth with AI in bid to reduce costs

BT Group has announced plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade, with around a fifth of them replaced by artificial intelligence (AI).

The telecoms giant currently has around 130,000 employees but plans to reduce that number to between 75,000 and 95,000 in the next seven years, as part of a bid to cut costs, bolster profits, and overhaul its workforce.

Some 10,000 of these roles will be replaced by AI, with customer service staff particularly at risk as BT looks to rely on online and app-based communication rather than call centres. The company added the cuts will begin once its full-fibre broadband and 5G network roll out is completed, as it will not need as many staff to maintain its systems.

BT chief executive Philip Jansen said that by the end of the 2020s, the firm will have a “much smaller workforce” and a “significantly reduced cost base”. This, he argued, means the business will have a “a brighter future.”

He added that AI will form a key part of the business’s technological transformation plans. “Whenever you get new technologies you get new changes,” he explained.

Mr Jansen continued by saying that “generative AI” tools such as ChatGPT - which can write essays, scripts, poems, and solve computer coding - “give us the confidence we can go even further.” But he stressed that the shift to automation did not mean customers will “feel like they are dealing with robots”, and instead will make services “faster, better, and more seamless”.

“We are multi-channel, we are online, we have 450 stores and that’s not planning on changing at all,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities for our customers to deal with people at BT… plenty of people to speak to.”

The firm said it will be working with its union partners throughout the job cuts to support staff, and hoped that the majority of the cuts could be completed through natural attrition – when an employee leaves the company but is not replaced - rather than redundancy.

The Communications and Workers Union (CWU) said the BT announcement was “no surprise”, with a spoksperson remarking: “The introduction of new technologies across the company, along with the completion of the fibre infrastructure build replacing the copper network, was always going to result in less labour costs for the company in the coming years.”

But the union said it wants BT to keep as many of its core employees as possible, with job cuts coming from sub-contractors “in the first instance”.

The announcement was made as BT reported a 12% decline in its pre-tax profit to £1.7 billion over the past year, as well as a slight dip in revenues.

It also comes after Vodafone said it would axe a tenth of its staff over the next three years, on the same day the Office for National Statistics reported that unemployment in the UK has unexpectedly risen again.