McKinsey & Co., which is one of the biggest consulting firms in the world, has announced plans to lay off 2,000 of its 45,000 employees in the coming weeks. Following a decrease in demand and predictions of a recession, many MNCs around the world have already laid off or are planning to lay off a significant amount of their workforce.
This would be McKinsey’s one of the biggest rounds of layoffs ever. The cuts will focus primarily on support staff in roles that do not have a direct contact with the company’s clients. The plan will be finalized in the coming weeks, and the final number of jobs to be cut could still change. However, the company is not on a hiring freeze and is still hiring employees who will be dealing directly with the clients.
McKinsey’s motive behind the layoffs
McKinsey & Co. is a global management consulting firm that provides consulting services to its clients. It is the largest firm by revenue of the Big 3, which includes McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company.
The firm is well known for creating staff-management plans for its clients, and now, in a major move, the company has decided to reduce its own workforce. The company has seen tremendous growth in its workforce over the past decade, from around 17,000 employees in 2012 to 28,000 in 2019 and 45,000 currently.
A McKinsey representative was reported as saying that the company is redesigning the way their non-client-serving teams operate for the first time in more than a decade so that these teams can effectively support and scale with the consulting giant.
The move comes under a plan named ‘Project Magnolia’, through which the company is hoping to preserve the compensation pool for its partners. The firm has decided to restructure how it organizes its support teams to condense few of the roles.
Major companies continue to sack workers
After seeing some major layoffs at tech companies, people are now seeing other MNCs follow in the footsteps of the tech companies. As the threat of recession keeps lingering, companies all over the world are deciding to minimize their losses by cutting significant portions of their workforce.
According to reports, KPMG has decided to lay off 2 percent of its employees in the United States. It is the first of the big 4 companies to lay off employees during the current tough global economic conditions.
Polygon, which is an Indian blockchain firm, has laid off 20 percent of its employees. The layoffs will reportedly affect around 100 employees. Yahoo has also let go of 20 percent of its workforce.
Microsoft has sacked 10,000 of its employees till now. Google has decided to let go of 6 percent of its total workforce across the globe. Amazon has already announced layoffs of 18,000 employees in January.
The Walt Disney Company has planned to reduce its employee headcount by 3.6 percent.
Twitter, which was already seeing major layoffs across the globe since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, has now decided to lay off employees from its sales team.
Meta, which has already laid off 11,000 workers, plans to lay off more in the coming months.
HP has announced that it will sack 4,000 – 6,000 of its employees by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
The job market is not expected to become stable anytime soon in the coming months. With more and more companies deciding to prominently slash their workforce, employees all over the world are on edge about job security and financial stability.
