October saw a slew of job cuts by major corporations across the globe, including TikTok, Upwork, and multinational advertising company Publicis Groupe.
In September 2023, Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun introduced a return-to-office (RTO) mandate, which many of its 10,000-strong workforce reportedly “ignored.”
Under the mandate, employees were required to be in the office three days a week, including a mandatory presence on Mondays.
The company’s U.S. spokesperson told HR Grapevine that management has been “clear and consistent” about its RTO policy, with the majority of employees adhering to it.
However, close to 100 U.S. employees were let go.
This week, an additional 200 employees may face layoffs, yet, Publicis has not confirmed whether this latest round is also RTO-related.
Publicis Groupe is laying off some employees at digital agencies after letting go of more than 100 people at its media shops last week. https://t.co/D0WEfjIcmv
— Ad Age (@adage) October 29, 2024
The latest layoffs add to the rising wave of retrenchments by big corporations this year.
Similarly, Amazon’s RTO mandate, which CEO Andy Jassy announced in September, attracted some backlash from employees and business experts.
About 73% of Amazon workers are already considering quitting because of the RTO mandate, a concept Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom has coined “backdoor layoffs”.
In his RTO announcement, Jassy called for a 15% increase in the ratio of individual contributors to managers.
“Having fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today.
If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers, decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day,” stated Jassy.
In a similar move, freelancing platform Upwork recently announced a 21% workforce reduction, affecting both full-time and hybrid employees.
CEO and President Hayden Brown reported that the move aims to align the organization more closely with its strategic priorities, citing both the current "business climate" and the company’s future operational principles as key factors behind the decision.
Social Media Giants Join the Wave of Corporate Cuts
Social media platforms TikTok and Meta also performed several hundred layoffs across their platforms.
TikTok has cut nearly 500 jobs in Malaysia to refocus on AI-driven content moderation, with parent company ByteDance confirming to Reuters that most affected employees were part of content moderation operations.
However, according to Reuters, the layoffs come after months of reports from the Malaysian government highlighting sharp increases in harmful social media content.
In the first quarter of 2024 alone, the government referred 51,638 cases to platforms like TikTok and Meta.
Meta also began retrenching employees across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs earlier this month, but the layoffs seem to coincide with reorganizations of specific teams.
“This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees,” company spokesperson Dave Arnold told The Verge.
Restructuring Triggers Widespread Layoffs
The layoffs have extended beyond media companies — financial institutions have also been restructuring their workforce to streamline operations.
According to Reuters, Goldman reinstated performance-related layoffs in 2022 after a two-year hiatus, resulting in job losses for between 1% and 5% of its workforce in 2023.
Credit card service corporation Visa also announced plans to lay off about 1,400 employees and contractors by the end of 2024, mainly targeting technology positions.
Against this backdrop, as of September, 7.4 million jobs stood to be filled while only 5.6 million people were hired.
While these companies seek greater efficiency, the impact on employment and turnover rates raises questions about the effectiveness of layoff-driven strategies.
