Hard hats with the lettering 'Siemens' hang on a wall in Nuremberg, southern Germany in a steam turbine plant on June 22, 2017.

German manufacturing conglomerate Siemens announced on Thursday that it was cutting 6,900 jobs worldwide in response to changes in the energy and commodity sectors.

Roughly half of the job cuts will be made in Germany, the company said in a press release, and will be made in the affected industries "over a period of several years."

"The cuts are necessary to ensure that our expertise in power-plant technology, generators and large electrical motors stays competitive over the long term. That's the goal behind the measures we're taking," said Janina Kugel, Siemens' chief human resources officer managing board member.

Despite the cuts, the company expects its new hire level to remain stable from the current year to 2018, and says it plans to move as many affected employees as possible to its 3,200 vacant job slots.

The company says that about 6,100 of the job cuts will be made to its power and gas division worldwide.

Siemens' "PG2020" program was implemented in part to anticipate and hedge against the changes in this industry. But while the company says the program has helped it make "considerable progress" in the power and gas industries, the press release concedes that measures "have to be further intensified since the scope and speed of the market changes have increased significantly."

Shares of Siemens, which employs about 372,000 people around the world, were little changed following the news.