IKEA cuts 7,500 jobs

Stockholm, Nov 21 (IANS) Swedish furniture giant IKEA Group plans to cut 7,500 jobs over the next two years as it reshuffles its organization amid a rapidly changing retail landscape, it said on Wednesday.The job cuts - representing just under 5 percent of the group's 160,000 global workforce - will mainly come from administrative roles within global support functions, Efe news quoted it as saying. At the same time, the company will be creating 11,500 jobs as it invests in new department stores and city shops, digitization, sustainability and increased capacity to provide a better and faster home-delivery service. "We will introduce a whole new organization, better adapted to meet our customers, the future and in a retail landscape in constant change," IKEA Sweden chief Hakan Svedman said in a statement. "The new IKEA will meet customers wherever they are and on their terms, in a faster and easier way. To enable this, we need to improve how we manage, work and organise ourselves," he said.
--IANS mr/