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Telecoms and broadband giant BT today claims to have achieved the final step in their 5-year long “Better Workplace” transformation programme, which has involved modernising and consolidating the number of offices they have (going from around 300 and down to nearly 30 key locations), by opening a new office – the ‘Four New Bailey’ building – in Manchester.
Four New Bailey will house up to 2,000 colleagues from across BT Group and has been fitted with the latest technology. It also boasts a rooftop terrace offering panoramic views of the city’s skyline. Sitting on the banks of the River Irwell, it replaces BT’s former office site in Deansgate and adds to the company’s other North West locations in Liverpool, Accrington and Warrington.
Manchester joins other locations including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Dundee and the London HQ in opening its doors to a newly built BT hub. Multi-million-pound refurbishments have also been carried out at other locations, including Belfast, Doncaster, Glasgow and Newcastle.
Admittedly, all of this does rather gloss over the impact on jobs, which in some areas has resulted in redundancies because not everybody will have been able to migrate into the new sites. But for BT, there have also been cost savings and efficiency improvements.
Allison Kirkby, BT Group CEO, said:
“The opening of our new Manchester office is a significant milestone on the journey to transform BT and our office spaces around the UK.
We’ve invested heavily to provide best-in-class office spaces for our people across the country, reflecting how critical we are to every region of the UK. The broader economic effect from our offices, our people and our spend with UK suppliers is worth £23bn to the nation’s economy and beyond our own people we support around 212,000 jobs in the wider UK economy. And this is in addition to the economic contribution from the full fibre broadband network we are building, calculated to be worth £72bn to the UK’s economy by 2030.
As I’ve met colleagues from across the company at our new and refurbished locations, I’m impressed and proud of the vital work they do in their local communities, and of the role BT plays nationwide.”
Allison highlights a new “independent report” by Hatch (here), which covers BT Group’s role in the UK as an employer and investor. It shows that the company directly employs more than 69,700 people and 15,500 contractors in the UK, including engineers building networks, teams in offices supporting customers, and people working in our retail stores.
More broadly, the company is said to support around 212,000 jobs and spends £9.6 billion with UK suppliers and subcontractors, many of which are small businesses. Speaking of which, Openreach’s up to £15bn investment into rolling out a full fibre (FTTP) broadband network is also said to be worth £72bn to the UK’s economy by 2030.
However, it’s always wise to take such forecasts with a pinch of salt, as accurately gauging the economic impact of faster broadband technologies is notoriously difficult, not least because most users won’t be starting from a point of zero connectivity.
The list of brand-new buildings to BT include: (BT Group HQ) One Braham, London; Three Snowhill, Birmingham; Assembly, Bristol; New Bailey, Manchester; Capital Quarter, Cardiff; Stanford House, Warrington; West Marketgait, Dundee; Endeavour, Sheffield; Plazza, Liverpool and (Openreach HQ) Gracechurch Street, London.
The list of refurbished offices include: Bangor, Plymouth, Glasgow, North Tyneside, Belfast, Doncaster and Newcastle (Gosforth).