LUFTHANSA announced plans to cut 4,000 roles yesterday as it aims to increase profitability and lean on AI to drive efficiency, reports CNBC.
The airline group said it will eliminate a total of 4,000 FTE, or full-time equivalent, roles worldwide by 2030. The company is targeting primarily admin roles, the majority of which will be affected at its home base in Germany, as part of a broader restructuring strategy.
“The Lufthansa Group is reviewing which activities will no longer be necessary in the future, for example due to duplication of work. In particular, the profound changes brought about by digitalization and the increased use of artificial intelligence will lead to greater efficiency in many areas and processes,” the company said in a release issued during its Capital Markets Day in Munich.
Lufthansa joins a number of companies citing AI as part of their restructuring strategy. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said earlier this year that artificial intelligence had partially helped to shrink the company’s headcount by 40 per cent down from 5,000 employees to almost 3,000. Meanwhile software company Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support roles while using AI to reduce its workforce.
“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said at the time.
More recently, tech consultancy Accenture also shared plans to exit staff who can’t be retrained to use AI, CEO Julie Sweet said in a call last week.
“We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy,” Sweet said, adding that the company is “exiting on a compression timeline” people for whom reskilling isn’t a “viable path.”
Lufthansa shares were up 0.9 per cent yesterday. The company’s stock has gained 25pc since the start of the year.
&uuid=(email))