Shopify had allowed nearly 5,000 employees to work from home indefinitely, even after the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic fade.
New Delhi: After allowing employees to work from home, Canadian e-commerce company Shopify has announced to cancel all recurring meetings involving more than two people ‘in perpetuity’. Besides, it has also introduced a rule saying no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays. The company’s latest guidelines stated that big meetings with more than 50 people can only be held during a six-hour window on Thursdays.
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“To start 2023, we’re cancelling all Shopify meetings with more than two people. Let’s give people back their maker time. Companies are for builders. Not managers,” Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian tweeted. He asserted that the decision has been taken to free up employee time.
The latest development comes amid a cost-cutting drive at the company, which lets merchants set up websites for online sales. Shopify became Canada’s most valuable company as online shopping boomed during pandemic, however, in 2022 the shares plunged about 75%
Shopify cut about 10 per cent of its workforce — around 1,000 employees across verticals — as it failed to predict that the e-commerce industry would continue to grow beyond the pandemic at the same pace it did during the two-year period.
The company CEO Tobi Lutke said in a statement that Shopify has to go through a reduction in workforce that will see about 10 per cent leave by the end of the day. “Most of the impacted roles are in recruiting, support, and sales, and across the company we’re also eliminating over-specialized and duplicate roles, as well as some groups that were convenient to have but too far removed from building products,” he informed.
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The company was sending emails to those affected and they will “have a meeting with a lead in their team”. Shopify’s workforce jumped from 1,900 in 2016 to around 10,000 in 2021 to meet the expected growth. Those affected in the layoff got 16 weeks of severance pay, plus an additional week for every year of tenure at Shopify.
