Sweden’s Telia Company is set to lay off around 400 employees in Lithuania as part of the streamlining of its operating model, with 200 redundancies planned in the telecoms company Telia Lietuva and in Telia Global Services Lithuania each.
The Telia Company Group plans to cut a total of about 3,000 jobs this year, Telia Lietuva said in a statement to the Nasdaq Vilnius Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The group will decentralize most of its common functions, shifting decision-making to country units, with the new structure expected to be in place by December.
Telia Lietuva CEO Giedre Kaminskaite-Salters said Telia Company’s change program “gives us an opportunity to make strategically necessary decisions in Lithuania, the benefits of which we will see in the nearest future”.
“Unfortunately, growing investment and talent retention also drives the need to optimize the number of employees: by the year-end, Telia Lietuva is planning to reduce it by 200,” Kaminskaite-Salters said in the statement.
“We have started consultations with trade union representatives and, from our side, will provide full support and appropriate compensation to redundant employees,” she added.
Telia Company President and CEO Patrik Hofbauer said, “This is a tough decision, but one that is necessary to ensure the long-term success of Telia.”
Talks with Telia Lietuva’s trade unions are expected to be concluded by mid-October.
Telia Lietuva currently employs about 1,900 people, and Telia Global Services Lithuania has 936 employees
The program is expected to result in restructuring charges of around 1 million euros for Telia Lietuva and 1.4 billion Swedish kronor (123 million euros) for Telia Company as a whole, with annual savings projected at 6.3 million euros and 2.6 billion Swedish kronor (229 million euros), respectively.
Source: BNS
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