Microsoft has announced that it will be cutting up to 18,000 jobs in a “restructuring plan” in an attempt to simplify the company and “align the recently acquired Nokia Devices and Services business with the company’s overall strategy”. To do this Microsoft plans to remove 12,500 positions from Nokia after it was bought by them in April 2014 for £4.6 billion and will be complete by the end of June 2015.
In an email to all employers Satya Nadella (Chief Executive of Microsoft) said “The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months. It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas.”
So what does this mean for Microsoft? Well Microsoft already promised to cut £350 million per year in costs, so these cuts are obviously a part of this even if it will cost them up to £935 million over the next year to actually complete the cuts it has planned including in redundancy funds. Satya Nadella also claimed that it is to make them more ‘agile’ and to help integrate Nokia into the bigger entity that is the overall company, however it still begs the question, does that really require the biggest job cut the company has seen in its history? Let us know what you think.
