Growth has slowed — Canva reshapes 22% of its workforce

Co-founder and CEO of Canva Melanie Perkins has sent employees a letter about a reorganization. It will affect 1,271 people, or 22% of the company. Some will have their roles changed, others will be offered relocation to centralized hubs, and with a third group the company will part ways. The letter does not specify how many people fall into each group.

Perkins explains her decision this way: this year has been the hardest for Canva, and the company's growth, as she reported earlier this year, has slowed for the first time in a decade. She says that after months of reflection and reviewing alternatives, she concluded that small changes would not be enough and that Canva needs to be «refounded». To that end, the company wants to return to its origins — small teams that make their own decisions and own the outcome.

«Without a doubt, this is the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history».

That is how Melanie Perkins assessed what is happening in her letter to the team.

What is changing inside the company

Perkins describes three changes, and each addresses a problem the company names itself.

• A single product organization. The Product, Growth and Platform divisions are being merged into one Product Org. According to the CEO, improving even one part of the product required maneuvering between three divisions, with unnecessary handoffs and coordination. The company spent years trying to solve this in various ways and ultimately took on the structure itself.
• Fewer narrow specializations and management layers. Over time, work was split among ever more specializations and teams, and different teams were responsible for parts of the same task. Now narrow specializations are being folded into broader roles so that a team can carry a goal from start to finish. In parallel, the company is simplifying management layers and merging overlapping areas of responsibility.
• Teams are being gathered in one place. Canva operates in 37 countries and promises to keep investing in its global team where proximity to the community, customers and markets matters. At the same time, Sydney will become the main base for most product teams and for roles where shared context and close collaboration are especially needed. From January, most employees on a hybrid schedule are expected to spend roughly 2–3 days a week in the office.

According to Perkins, leadership first defined the company's mission and goals, then the necessary structures, skills and locations, and only after that looked at what this means for specific roles.

What those leaving will receive

The package for those being laid off includes:

• a payment of at least six months' salary, including what is legally required, regardless of country;
• waiving the one-year vesting threshold for those who joined the company within the past year;
• 12 months of health insurance in countries where Canva currently provides it;
• 12 months of the Canva Care support program, including for family members;
• career help: individual coaching, interview preparation and a year of LinkedIn Premium; a significant part of the recruiting team will work on the résumés of those leaving and on interview practice;
• a voluntary directory of former employees that Canva itself will show to investors, partners and industry contacts;
• the work MacBook, which stays with the employee, since, as the company explains, not everyone has a personal laptop.

Separately, the company is launching the Canva Collective Fund. Departing employees who want to start their own business or a project for the local community can receive a grant of 10,000 dollars. Interest must be declared by December 14. Canva will not take a stake in projects created with this money.

How the coming weeks will go

Every affected employee will receive an invitation to a one-on-one meeting with one of the leaders of their area. Because of differing local requirements in 37 countries, the timing and format of these conversations will vary. Those leaving will keep access to Slack and Gmail until the end of the week so they can decide for themselves when and how to tell colleagues. Area leaders will explain the changes in their zones by the end of the week. Non-critical meetings are cancelled until the end of the week, and employees have been allowed to take a day off without filing for leave. The company-wide meeting is set for November 10, and divisional meetings will begin on November 11.

What is behind the bet on generalists

The scale can be estimated from the letter's figures: if 1,271 people are 22%, then Canva currently employs about 5.8 thousand people. For a company whose product, by its own account, is used by hundreds of millions of people, this is a restructuring of almost a quarter of the team at once.

The main shift concerns which specialists Canva considers necessary. Abandoning narrow specializations in favor of broad roles means that people capable of carrying a task in full — from product idea to launch — become more valuable. For designers, developers and managers on the market, this is probably a signal that large product companies are less willing to keep a separate person for every narrow area. Perkins speaks in the letter about new technologies that are changing what and how people create, but she does not directly link the cuts to AI, so drawing that conclusion on the company's behalf would be premature.

A separate question concerns distributed teams. The bet on Sydney and on days in the office apparently makes relocation a condition of keeping a job for some employees outside Australia. Those who cannot or do not want to relocate will probably have to look for a new place.

For Canva users, the letter contains no changes to products, prices or plans. Merging three large divisions into one may affect the pace of the teams' work during the restructuring period; the company promises details about next steps at the internal meetings on November 10–11.

Why did Canva have to reshape almost a quarter of its workforce: a bloated structure, a slowing market, pressure from AI tools?