The Swedish furniture chain Ikea announced on Wednesday that it could eliminate up to 7,500 jobs worldwide in the next two years, as part of a process of transformation of the company.
Ingka Group, the company that accounts for 90% of Ikea’s sales, will create 11,500 new jobs at the same time, in a plan that includes new stores, extensive investments in digitalization and an increase in capacity.
“We are going to introduce a new organization, better adapted to satisfy our customers, to make it possible, we need to improve our way of working, directing and organizing ourselves,” IkeaSuecia director Håkan Svedman said in a statement.
The Swedish chain specified that not all countries will be affected in the same way by the measures, which will mainly affect central offices and services.
The Swedish group has a staff of 160,000 employees spread across thirty markets. Ikea sales increased to 38,800 million euros in the last fiscal year (September 2017-August 2018), with a year-on-year increase of 4.5%.
