{"id":7781,"date":"2026-06-17T17:55:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T17:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7781"},"modified":"2026-06-17T17:55:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T17:55:47","slug":"ao-world-recruits-more-staff-in-south-africa-after-uk-tax-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7781","title":{"rendered":"AO World recruits more staff in South Africa after UK tax rises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"textFreeArticle\">\n<p>AO World Plc is replacing UK call center employees with recruits based in South Africa, as the online household goods retailer hit out at higher taxes and other costs on businesses imposed by the British government.<\/p>\n<p>The South Africa call center, with 150 staff, has saved about \u00a32 million ($2.7 million) since opening about a year ago, AO World said Wednesday as it reported its latest results. Savings are expected to reach \u00a34 million. More recruitment in South Africa will result in the majority of customer calls being taken overseas by the end of this fiscal year, it said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the latest evidence of retailers feeling the strain in the UK after the Labour government raised business taxes and boosted the minimum wage since coming to power. Britain\u2019s largest retailers have shed almost 18 000 jobs in the past year as they grapple with the changes.<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIn the short term we don\u2019t see that we\u2019re likely to get many more business-friendly policies,\u201d AO World\u2019s Chief Financial Officer Mark Higgins said in a phone interview. \u201cSo we will continue with the general investments we\u2019re making, whether that\u2019s in AI or automation or continuing to recruit offshore and protect us against some of the policies of the current government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 2026 Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#World #recruits #staff #South #Africa #tax #rises<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AO World Plc is replacing UK call center employees with recruits based in South Africa, as the online household goods retailer hit out at higher taxes and other costs on&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1453,10016,1497,409,1622,227,51],"class_list":["post-7781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-africa","tag-recruits","tag-rises","tag-south","tag-staff","tag-tax","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}