A Message From Our CEO Ryan Roslansky Published on Jul 20, 2020
LinkedIn Corporate Communications
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Today, our CEO Ryan Roslansky sent the following note to LinkedIn employees. Below we refer to our lines of businesses by their acronyms. For clarity, LMS stands for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and LTS stands for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
Team -
We are entering our new fiscal year with a greater sense of urgency than ever to stay ahead of the paradigm shifts our members are facing. Everywhere, people are adapting to new ways of staying connected, learning, networking, selling, hiring, and finding work. We got ahead of this shift in March and moved with speed to adapt and innovate. We added many new features to our products and even launched new products like virtual events, #OpenToWork, and virtual interview feedback. We used our platform to showcase trusted news & voices, made our recruitment tools free for those fighting the pandemic, and pledged to help 25 million people worldwide acquire the skills they need for free.
And thanks to all of you and your hard work, we are seeing that sense of urgency and innovation reflected in strong member engagement, record numbers of hours spent learning on the platform, and in the continued momentum across Marketing Solutions, Premium, Learning Solutions, and Sales Solutions.
However, LinkedIn is not immune to the effects of the global pandemic. Our Talent Solutions business continues to be impacted as fewer companies, including ours, need to hire at the same volume they did previously.
Normally, we would have rolled out our annual plan at the end of June. But as Ive shared at the Company All Hands, this year weve been taking our time to get the FY21 plan right given the changing dynamics around us. And in advance of sharing the entire plan, I want to focus today specifically on the most challenging decision we've made to move forward with our strategy.
To continue adapting and accelerating the company like we have been, we need to ensure we are focusing our efforts and resources against our most strategic priorities to set up the company for success today-and well into the future. When we took a hard look at the business, we decided we needed to make some hard calls.
After weeks of discussion and deliberation, the executive team and I have made the extremely difficult decision to reduce approximately 960 roles, or about 6 percent of our employee base, across our Global Sales and Talent Acquisition organizations. I'm sharing this news today so that everyone has the complete picture of these changes and why we are making them, and I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning.
What we are changing
First, there are a set of roles in GSO that are no longer needed as we evolve the way we work with our talent media customers and small businesses.
We're seeing the product investments weve made over the past two years in LMS deliver incredible results, but we are still managing a separate talent media business in LTS. By moving from two separate media businesses to a unified approach across all customers that leverages our LMS investments, we will be able to serve our customers holistically and not have to continue duplicating costly platforms, systems, and tools internally.
Similarly, in order to service more small businesses better, we must move from servicing them through a field sales team to servicing them online. To drive customer value for small businesses, weve kicked off a very substantial product investment, including our products-and-services marketplace and a unified online storefront channel strategy. This online channel approach will allow us to better serve the millions of small businesses that will need LinkedIn through this pandemic and beyond-and aligns with how we plan to focus our field sales efforts on our higher value relationships.
Second, as mentioned above, COVID-19 is having a sustained impact on the demand for hiring, both in our LTS business and in our company. In GSO and GTO, there are roles that are no longer needed as we adjust to the reduced demand in our internal hiring and for our talent products globally.
While this decision will help us ensure that our company and platform are resilient and emerge stronger to reach our vision, there is simply no harder decision to make as a CEO.
These reductions impact our colleagues personally-talented people who have chosen to spend their time and energy working at LinkedIn. When we all chose to join LinkedIn, it was to realize our vision. And parting ways with our colleagues who share this vision is difficult.
We took extreme care in making these changes and were guided by these principles, which are in line with our culture and values.
Consistency and Fairness: Consistent with our culture of integrity, we prioritized fairness, consistency, and compliance throughout this process.
Diversity: We were unwavering in our commitment to diversity.
Compassion: We made each and every decision with compassion, pledging to help impacted employees look for other roles within the company, build new skills, and land on their feet if they no longer have a role at LinkedIn.
What we are doing to support affected employees
We are committed to a thoughtful and compassionate transition process and are helping with comprehensive financial, healthcare and career support.
Financial: We're providing a minimum of ten weeks of severance pay. This may increase based on tenure and country-specific practices, and is in addition to a paid notification period that varies by country. In addition, a payment in lieu of FY20 bonuses will be paid out at full target for those who are bonus-eligible, and departing employees will be eligible for our August stock vesting.
Healthcare: In the U.S., we'll pay for
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A Message From Our CEO Ryan Roslansky Published on Jul 20, 2020 
