COVID CUT: Culture Amp sheds staff as the coronavirus downturn bites

People and culture platform Culture Amp has been forced to shed 8% of its workforce as global impact of coronavirus hits the international arms of the business.

CEO and co-founder Didier Elzinga announced the redundancies to the team on Thursday, with 36 positions going.

While the company continues to grow, it has revised down growth targets. Culture Amp works with around 2,750 companies worldwide with 3 million employees survey. It raised US$82 million in a Series E funding round to take the nine-year-old HR tech startup to unicorn status

The move comes has big global tech companies such as Uber, WeWork and Airbnb have cut around a quarter of their employees in the wake of covid-19 lockdowns.

“This week I have had to make the incredibly difficult decision to let 36 people go, which is 8% of our global team,” Elzinga said in a statement.

“Whilst we are fortunate to still be growing revenue quarter on quarter, we are not immune to the worldwide economic uncertainty. The major overseas markets we operate in – being the UK and US – have both been hard hit by the impacts of COVID-19.”

The CEO said the Melbourne-based company made the decision to shed staff after reducing its forecasted growth rate.

“Whilst letting go of one employee feels like too many, we count ourselves fortunate that we have not had to make redundancies in the range of 20-40% as many other companies in our industry have,” he said.”More than ever our mission of building ‘culture first’ companies matters. It’s even harder to build a powerful culture in a downturn, but those that do will come out stronger.”

Elzinga said the company wanted to “express our deepest gratitude” to those going.”Each of these individuals was a valued member of our team, and the decision to let them go was not taken lightly, nor is it a reflection of their work.”