Canva, the Australian graphic design platform, told staff Wednesday that a sweeping restructuring will affect 1,271 workers – about 22% of its global workforce – through job cuts, role changes and relocations, after its first slowdown in growth in a decade, The Guardian reported, citing an email chief executive Melanie Perkins sent to staff Wednesday.
Perkins called the decision “without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history.” For some employees, she wrote, it will mean a new role or a move to one of the company’s central hubs. “Sadly, it will also mean saying goodbye to teammates and friends who have helped build Canva into what it is today.” The company did not say how many of the 1,271 will be laid off, how many will move into changed roles and how many will be asked to relocate.
An empty open-plan office (Mike Beltzner / CC BY-SA 2.0).
The shake-up goes beyond headcount. Canva is folding its product, growth and platform teams into a single product organization to cut down on handovers, stripping out management layers, and basing more of its product teams in Sydney. From January, most employees on hybrid schedules will be expected in the office two to three days a week.
Those leaving will receive at least six months of salary, keep healthcare coverage for a further 12 months in countries where the benefit applies, and keep their laptops, according to the report.
Canva, founded in Sydney in 2013, is one of Australia’s most valuable startups and has long been discussed as a candidate for a blockbuster Nasdaq listing. Because it is privately held, there was no market reaction to the news.
The company joins a long list of technology firms shrinking or reshaping their workforces this year: Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs in March, and fellow Australian software maker WiseTech Global is partway through cutting roughly a quarter of its staff. Unlike several of those companies, Canva did not blame artificial intelligence for the cuts, framing them instead as a response to slowing growth and a need for simpler, faster decision-making.
What it means: the easy-growth era at one of the world’s most valuable private software companies is over, and 1,271 people now face a layoff, a changed role or an unwanted move. For everyone else in tech, the message from Sydney is that even a household-name product with hundreds of millions of users is not immune to the sector’s slowdown.
JBizNews Desk | Sydney
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