Qualtrics, the Provo-based experience-management software company formerly owned by Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, is cutting about 14 percent of its workforce to reduce costs and restructure its organization, according to an internal memo to employees last week from Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin. The memo cited a need to address the internal complexity created by its past hiring and growth.
The privately held firm, co-headquartered in Seattle, will lay off 780 employees, Serafin’s memo said. Qualtrics’ headcount was about 5,500 before the cuts.
“Rapid hiring was essential to enable our growth up to this point, but it also created complexity that does not support continued growth at our scale,” Serafin wrote. “Simply put, the organizational structures, work processes and the way we made decisions previously don’t work for the company we’ve become, or the company we aspire to be.”
In addition to the layoffs, “several hundred roles are changing or moving locations over the next year,” Serafin wrote in the memo provided by the company to the press and later made public on its website.
Serafin explained that the changes will “touch every team at the company,” adding that they follow “a deep review of every function in the company.” The changes are meant to improve collaboration, time to market and the ease of doing business with customers and partners, he wrote.
He thanked and apologized to departing employees, outlining plans for a minimum of 10 weeks of severance pay for U.S. employees, depending on tenure and level, in addition to other benefits and career services.
Qualtrics joins hundreds of tech companies that have laid off staff over the past few years amid a broader industry downturn, which came after a COVID pandemic-driven software boom.
Founded in 2002, Qualtrics bills itself as the leader and creator of the “experience management” category. Its products help companies collect and analyze data, through surveys and other technologies, to make customer and employee decisions. More than 90 percent of the Fortune 100 are Qualtrics customers.
German software giant SAP acquired Qualtrics from Smith for $8 billion in 2019. The company spun out of SAP two years later and raised $1.55 billion in an initial public offering.
Earlier this year Qualtrics went private again, with California private equity firm Silver Lake buying the company in partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in a $12.5 billion deal. In the first quarter of this year — the last time Qualtrics publicly reported financials — it reported $409.8 million in revenue, up 22 percent year-over-year. The company has 28 offices globally.