BT Group’s chief executive officer has indicated that advances in artificial intelligence could lead to even more significant job cuts than the telecommunications company has already announced.
Allison Kirkby told the Financial Times that BT’s existing plans to eliminate more than 40,000 jobs and strip out £3 billion of costs by the end of the decade “did not reflect the full potential of AI”. The chief executive officer suggested that if AI presented new opportunities for BT to operate with fewer resources, the company would need to adapt to remain competitive.
“Depending on what we learn from AI… there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” she said in the interview.
Since taking over in February last year, Kirkby has doubled down on her predecessor Philip Jansen’s plans announced in 2023 to cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030. The original announcement indicated that BT would rely on a much smaller workforce and significantly reduced cost base by the end of the 2020s.
The job cuts form part of BT’s broader cost-cutting strategy as the company seeks to streamline operations and improve efficiency. The FTSE 100 company has been implementing these reductions whilst maintaining its core telecommunications services.
The telecommunications giant has not specified which roles or departments would be most affected by potential AI-driven job cuts, but the technology is expected to impact various aspects of the business operations.
Looking ahead, Kirkby estimated that increases in employers’ national insurance would cost BT more than £100 million, adding to the financial pressures driving the company’s cost reduction efforts. She warned that “the last thing we all need is to be further taxed” as the company navigates its workforce transformation.
The job cuts announced by BT represent one of the largest workforce reductions in the UK telecommunications sector, with AI potentially making these reductions even more substantial than originally planned.
