SAP has unveiled strategic restructuring plans for the year ahead, which will include repositioning workers instead of firing them.
In an official announcement, the German software giant confirmed that “the majority” of the 8,000 affected roles would be covered either by “internal re-skilling measures” or voluntary leave programs.
At the end of 2023, SAP had around 108,000 full-time workers, meaning that the 8,000 affected positions account for just over 7% of the company’s headcount.
SAP doesn’t want to lay off workers
Last year was characterized by wide-scale layoffs affecting around 262,000 tech workers globally (via layoffs.fyi), and the trend looks to be continuing into 2024, though to a lesser degree, thankfully.
SAP’s decision to put 8,000 workers under the spotlight is clearly a response to changing market trends and an economy that has been slow to recover, but it’s a welcome change to the redundancies that have been announced by other companies.
The company confirmed: “SAP expects to exit 2024 at a headcount similar to current levels.”
SAP said that the cost to restructure its workforce is expected to total around €2 billion ($2.2 billion), indicating that the company values its workers but would prefer them to fulfill other positions to better align with its goals moving forward.
The past few years have seen SAP’s attention turn to the cloud, and thus its cloud revenue has grown and continues to grow into 2025, according to company projections.
By 2025, it expects a revenue of €37.5 billion ($40.8 billion), with around €21.5 billion ($23.4 billion), or around 57%, coming from its cloud business. SAP also revealed that the majority (86%) of its revenue would be considered predictable.
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