BT offers holidays for pay cuts

Telecommunications giant BT is offering staff the chance of long holidays in return for a big pay cut.

The former state-owned company is looking to reduce its wage bill while trying to avoid redundancies after being hit by the economic downturn. One option available to staff is an up front sum of 25% of annual salary in return for taking the whole year off. Employees have also been offered a one-off payment of £1,000 if they agree to go part-time. Parents will have the opportunity to restrict their hours to school term times to allow them to spend time with their children.

A company spokesman said: "BT is known for its progressive human resources policies with flexible working. "Being one of the largest employers in the UK I think this is an extremely progressive way of managing costs during a recession, rather than making redundancies."

The company said it had "a tradition of innovation for flexible working practices", including home-working, sabbaticals and secondments.

"These are innovative ways to help keep employees during these tough economic times," it added.

BT, which has more than 100,000 employees, posted losses of £1.3bn for the first three months of the year. The company has said it will cut about 15,000 jobs mostly in the UK this year, after losing a similar number of posts last year. Earlier this year BT chief executive Ian Livingston said the "unacceptable performance" of BT Global Services, which handles the network systems of large firms, had overshadowed other parts of the business.

Source: BBC News, 4th July, 2009

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