Barclays, Britain's third biggest bank, is set to hire 1,000 more 'customer facing' branch staff in an effort to improve customer service. At the same time 800 middle management and support jobs will be lost. These posts are in predominantly well-paid areas such as human resources, IT, strategy and finance. There will also be some reduction in support staff. Barclay's UK banking division employs about 45,000 people and will try to redeploy some of the 800 back-office staff losing their jobs. Barclays has more than 2,000 branches in the UK, with 26,000 people employed at offices, call centres and on the high street.