Swedish multinational firm IKEA Group, owner of IKEA furniture stores globally, has announced plans to trim its workforce worldwide by about 7,500 jobs.

The jobs cut will be implemented over the next couple of years and will affect mainly administrative staff in central support functions.

In a statement, the group said cutting 7,500 administrative jobs is its response to the expected restructuring of its workforce globally, amounting to almost 5% of IKEA’s current workforce.

“We need to simplify the way we are organised. Over the last years … we have invested in resources in many different ways. And, to be honest, now we see that in several parts of our organisation we have a bit of duplicate work,” CEO Jesper Brodin told Reuters.

Despite the cuts, the IKEA Group stressed that it will also create 11,500 new jobs as a result of its expansion plans that include new store formats and developing digital capabilities.

IKEA employs more than 190,000 people and owns 411 locations globally, according to its 2017 financial report.

(Source: hrmasia.com)