Cisco plans to cut about 5% of its staff

Cisco unveiled plans to realign its workforce over the coming months to capitalize on key growth opportunities, looking to strengthen its enterprise networking, security and platform offerings. But the pivot won’t come cheap. The company noted in financial filings it expects to spend a total of $600 million on the move, with half of that outlay coming in the current quarter.

The restructuring will include the shuffling, layoff and hire of new talent and the slimdown of its real estate portfolio to reflect an increase in hybrid work. A company representative told Fierce the plan will impact about 5% of its workforce. As of July 30, 2022, the company had approximately 83,300 full-time employees, meaning approximately 4,100 people will lose their jobs.

But the representative noted Cisco will be hiring for other roles and expects to end its current fiscal year with “roughly the same” number of employees as it had at the start.

“This decision was not taken lightly, and we will do all we can to offer support to those impacted, including generous severance packages, job placement services and other benefits wherever possible,” the representative said. The job placement assistance will include doing “everything we can do” to help affected employees step into other open positions at the company, the representative added. BizJournals