Canva Restructures, Affecting 22% of Its Workforce

Canva is carrying out a sweeping restructuring that will affect 22 percent of its workforce. According to an announcement today from co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins, 1,271 people will be affected by the changes, roughly one in five of the design platform's employees.

Perkins said that for some staff the changes will mean a new role or a request to relocate to the company's main hubs, while for others they will end in layoffs. Of those leaving, she said the company is saying goodbye to "teammates and friends who helped bring Canva to where it is today." The changes go beyond job cuts: they also reshape the company's team structure, work locations and office policy.

Perkins: Small steps would not be enough

Perkins said that after weighing several alternatives, she reached the difficult conclusion that small adjustments would not be sufficient. To prepare for the next decade, she said, Canva needs to be rebuilt, or "re-founded," which in her view means returning to the company's roots.

The goal she described is small, empowered teams with the freedom to make decisions. These teams are meant to own their work and focus on the issues that matter most to the community. In other words, the stated rationale for the restructuring is a return to working in smaller, more autonomous units. Perkins' remarks suggest the decision was not taken lightly and that other options were on the table.

What changes in the organizational structure

At the center of the plan is the merging of the Product, Growth and Platform teams into a single product organization. Management layers will also be simplified and overlapping responsibilities combined. The company described these steps as simplifying layers and consolidating overlapping responsibilities.

Canva will also make Sydney the primary hub for some roles in specialist areas where closer collaboration with more product teams and shared context is especially important. According to Perkins, some employees may be asked to move to these hubs. The restructuring therefore changes not only headcount but also where teams will work.

Office policy and support for departing staff

From January, Canva will expect most hybrid employees to be in the office two to three days a week, with the exact figure varying according to what makes sense for each team's area of work. Rather than a single rule, the office expectation can differ from team to team.

Employees who leave the company will receive at least six months of pay, twelve months of health insurance coverage and career support resources. A similar development hit the tech sector just a day earlier, when Squarespace announced layoffs affecting 19 percent of its workforce.