Canva Cuts 1,200 Jobs but Wins Praise for Six-Month Severance

Canva is laying off 1,200 employees, roughly 22% of its staff, and the Sydney-based design company is drawing unusual praise for how it's paying for the exits. CEO Melanie Perkins announced the restructuring on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post, pairing the cuts with a severance letter that social media users have spent the week applauding.

The package is concrete. Every terminated employee gets six months of salary regardless of location, according to the letter. Canva will also remove the one-year vesting cliff for people who joined within the last year, meaning recent hires can still walk away with shares. Healthcare continues. So does dedicated career support: resume help, coaching, interview preparation and one year of LinkedIn Premium.

There's cash for founders, too. Canva launched a fund offering $10,000 grants to departing employees who want to start a company or project of their own. "Whether it's starting a business or doing something meaningful for their local community, the fund is designed to help get those ideas off the ground," the company said in the letter. Departing staff also keep their MacBook laptops.

What did the CEO say?

Perkins didn't soft-pedal the decision. "We're making significant changes to how we're organised, which sadly means saying goodbye to many exceptionally talented people who have helped build Canva into what it is today," she wrote on LinkedIn.

She called the move the toughest in the company's history. "This is the hardest decision we've made in Canva's history, and we know it will deeply impact many people and their loved ones," Perkins wrote. "While we believe these changes are critical to help set Canva up for the future, Canva would not be the company it is today without their hard work, and we want to do everything we can to help set them up well for their next chapter."

Perkins also built what she described as "an opt-in alumni directory" where former employees can learn about work opportunities, and she posted her own email address, asking leaders with open roles to contact her directly.

Why now?

The CEO didn't give a reason for the layoffs in the note. The timing is hard to miss, though. The cuts land as Canva gears up for a potential IPO, following several years of heavy spending on its suite of AI-powered products.

How does this compare with typical layoffs?

Mass restructuring stories usually run the other way. Workers struggle to land on their feet, or the company fails to support them at all. In the current cycle, companies have dropped longtime staff abruptly over group Zoom calls and moved on.

Canva took a different route, and commenters on Perkins's post noticed. "Really impressive, empathetic, transparent, and generous way to communicate what was undoubtedly a very hard decision," one LinkedIn commenter wrote. "Especially with what this industry has seen over the past year, this is an example for other organizations on how to do a hard thing right." Another put it more bluntly: "Plenty of companies will do layoffs this year. Few will do them like this."

That's likely true, and the positive attention around Canva's handling sets a visible benchmark. It's hard to imagine at least a few leaders won't take note — or that workers elsewhere, once shown the door, won't start asking why their exit didn't look like this one.