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Meta plans to dismiss approximately 3,600 employees identified as low performers and replace them with new hires, Bloomberg reported citing an internal memo of the company which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The decision has been taken by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and will impact almost five percent of the company’s workforce. Meta had approximately 72,400 employees as of September.
Mark Zuckerberg said, “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster." Performance-based cuts are intended to ensure that the company has the “strongest talent" and is able to “bring new people in", he said.
Such dismissals are a common practice among major US corporations and come after Microsoft reportedly announced similar cuts last week affecting less than one percent of its workforce.
The planned job cuts are a part of Meta’s effort to achieve 10% “non-regrettable" attrition by the end of the current performance cycle, as per the memo. Employees who have been with Meta long enough to receive a performance review and are deemed underperforming will be impacted. The company also assured that affected employees that they would receive “generous severance."
Meta has restructured its policies and operations under Mark Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency" initiative, which was launched to optimise costs and streamline the organisation. Over the past year, Meta has already laid off thousands of employees in a bid to cut costs to enhance profitability. The layoffs coincide with several strategic and policy shifts at Meta which has recently made changes to its content moderation policies, loosening rules on posts related to controversial topics such as immigration and transgender rights.
The company also announced end of its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States- which has raised fears about the possible spread of misinformation on Meta’s platforms. Meta has also reduced internal programmes aimed at improving workforce diversity in a move that critics view as a departure from its previously stated commitment to inclusivity.
