5,500 staff face sack as Cisco plans job cut

Cisco has confirmed significant job cuts are on the cards, with the intention to make up to 5,500 staff redundant, representing seven per cent of its global workforce. The figure is lower than rumoured 14,000 cuts reported recently by Computer Retailer News (CRN), but still bears comparison to previous culls made by the company in […]

Cisco has confirmed significant job cuts are on the cards, with the intention to make up to 5,500 staff redundant, representing seven per cent of its global workforce.
The figure is lower than rumoured 14,000 cuts reported recently by Computer Retailer News (CRN), but still bears comparison to previous culls made by the company in recent years.
The cuts, which were announced as part of Cisco’s fiscal Q4 figures, will fall on lower growth areas of the business, with savings reinvested in priority segments such as security, IoT, collaboration, next-generation data centres and cloud, a statement said.
CEO Chuck Robbins described the process as “enabling us to optimise our cost base in lower growth areas of our portfolio”.
The company did not specify the lower growth areas, although they are the firm’s hardware businesses, switching and routing (two of its three largest units, in terms of revenue).
The US-based IT company has a sizable number of employees in Nigeria and most of them may be affected, one of its top Nigerian officials told Daily Trust yesterday.  
In August 2014, it announced plans to cut 6,000 jobs, or eight per cent of its total workforce at the time. In August 2013, the company axed 4,000 employees, or about 5 per cent of the total. It also cut 1,300 jobs in July 2012. This followed a reduction of 6,500 employees the previous year, representing about 9 per cent its global workforce.