From looking at trends for the UC and collaboration industry in 2023 to new call routing settings, here are some extracts from popular news stories this week.
Amazon Layoff Hike to 18,000 Exceeds Expectations
E-commerce giant Amazon has announced this week it will not be laying off 10,000 staff as first reported in November, but 18,000.
The cuts represent an 80 per cent increase on the forecast reported in the Wall Street Journal, amounting to about 1.2% of its worldwide workforce of around 1.5 million.
In a statement shared with Amazon employees this week, Andy Jassy, CEO at Amazon, confirmed the losses; he said: “Today, I wanted to share the outcome of these further reviews, which is the difficult decision to eliminate additional roles. Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles.”
The cuts will affect around 5% of the corporate workforce. About what divisions would be most affected, Jassy stated:
“Several teams are impacted; however, most role eliminations are in our Amazon Stores and PXT organisations.”
As shopper demand appears to have slowed while inflation rates have climbed steadily higher, Amazon is not the only tech firm to cut costs across divisions.
‘Businesses Need to Boost Hybrid Working’ Following UK Strikes – GoTo
Remote work has become a business imperative, and people need to be able to work from anywhere, according to Paul Carolan, AVP of Sales EMEA, GoTo.
Carolan made the comments on what was dubbed in the UK media as ‘Tragic Thursday’ due to an estimated 10 per cent of trains running across the country.
The lack of running trains was caused by ongoing strike action within the UK’s rail industry, meaning millions of commuters struggled to get to work.
As a result, GoTo states that businesses must provide IT support to boost hybrid working within their organisations.
Carolan commented:
“The cost-of-living crisis, economic volatility, and ongoing train strike action all go to show just how unpredictable the world can be.
“To accommodate this, remote work has become a business imperative: people need to be able to work from anywhere.
“However, while the flexibility of remote and hybrid work models offers a range of benefits, it does also pose some new challenges.
“For instance, employees scattered around the country and even the world can no longer swing by the IT desk when they encounter a technology problem.
“This can cause delays in business operations which ultimately impacts the bottom line."
GoTo says that because of the likelihood of future industrial action, businesses will need to prepare their IT departments to help remote employees should they have any technical problems.
Microsoft to Add a New Call Setting to Teams
Microsoft is introducing a new way of managing incoming calls when a user is already busy with an existing call or meeting.
According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the feature will be called ‘busy-on-busy’.
The new setting will allow Teams users to decide whether calls can come through, play a busy signal, or redirect the call based on their unanswered call routing preference.
The roadmap post states: “Manage how incoming calls are routed when you are busy in an existing call or meeting directly from your Calls settings in the Teams app.
