By Martin Vedris

ESPOO, FINLAND: Nokia has announced that it will retrench up to 615 employees worldwide in a bid to “ensure that resources are well allocated to meet the business needs and de-layer the organization”.

Nokia will also close its site in Turku, Finland and relocate the activities from there to another site, Salo.

The company issued a statement on its corporate international website saying that the job cuts are part of a reorganisation it began at the start of 2008.

In the company’s Markets unit, Nokia will shed 450 employees, a maximum of 100 of those coming from Finland.

It will also lose approximately 130 employees from its Nokia Research Center (NRC) — the company’s research and development unit. The company states again that a maximum of 100 of those will be from Finland.

Of the 220 employees at the Turku site, Nokia says it will relocate all of them to the Salo site or to the capital area in Finland.

A further 35 employees in the global process operations unit will also lose their jobs.

“Today’s changes are part of Nokia’s constant renewal where it is important to be close to our customers and ensure that our people are able to focus on the key business priorities. Also, our aim is to find alternative work within Nokia for as many employees as possible,” said Nokia senior vice president, Human Resources, Juha Äkräs.

The proposed job cuts and relocations are to take effect from 1 January 2009.

Nokia reports that its worldwide net sales for quarter three 2008 were EUR 12.2 billion (AUD $22.7 billion).