HP

Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced that it plans on saving around £2 billion by axing 27, 000 jobs.

HP are the worlds largest maker of personal computers and the reduction in staff will account for about eight per cent of their total workforce. They currently have workers in one hundred and eighty countries, 20, 000 of which are based in the UK. HP is yet to confirm where they will be cutting down on staff. "We have not yet announced specific plans with regards to specific locations. We do expect the workforce reduction to impact just about every business and region," a spokesman said.

The cuts are planned to take place by the end of 2014. There are six UK sites in Bracknell, London, Bristol, Warrington, Erskine and Belfast. This reduction in staff will represent their biggest to date, with their last major reduction occurring in 2008. The company's CEO, Meg Whitman, has expressed her sadness over the need for this 'realignment', but explains that these cuts are needed now as a part of a wider scheme. The scheme aims to ensure that HP maintains competitiveness in a market now dominated by smart phones and tablet devices. In that sense, the cuts are smart if they can in the long run ensure that less people overall lose their job. HP should try, however, to ensure that the money they save from these job cuts is put to good use.

HP is making the cut with regret and as such hopes to reduce the number of redundancies that will have to be made. It is aiming to mitigate the redundancy numbers by offering early retirement settlements. Unfortunately, this is just an action that they have to take. Having assessed their business it was clear to them that extra staff represented a big 'cost bucket'. They have to go after these cost buckets if they intend to continue to compete in the market. Whitman explained that the company was "going after the big cost buckets", and that savings from the restructure would be reinvested in developing technologies. "These initiatives build upon our recent organisational realignment, and will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business," she explained.

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