Layoff? Here are some financial tips to consider:
Many times, employees are caught off guard when a layoff occurs, but these tips can be useful if you are in such a situation.
USA TODAY
- Procter & Gamble plans to cut 7,000 jobs, accounting for 6.4% of the workforce over the next two years.
- P&G reviews product portfolios and geographical presence with potential brand sales and market exits.
- The acquisition is expected to play a key role in job cuts and is targeted at high-paying employees who are close to retirement.
With the aim of revitalizing growth, Procter & Gamble has vowed to cut 7,000 jobs by mid-2027.
This is what happens.
A closer look at the disclosures and past restructuring of the Cincinnati-based consumer giant provides insight into the reduction in targets, lean pressures, and the dangers they may face if sales do not bounce back.
- At the end of P&G’s major restructuring, most job cuts were acquisitions. Possible targets: Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980.
- So far, P&G shows that you want to create a trim. The cuts for that last round began small, but deeper after the previous round failed to achieve a conversion.
- With the next new CEO and other management shift, more changes could occur at the top.
- The company said some brands might go, but it’s not clear which brand or which brand is what.
What do you look for:
Summary: What P&G has revealed so far
P&G first announced plans to cut jobs at an investor meeting in Paris on June 5 after recording a decline in sales growth rates for over a year.
Cut represents 6.4% of the 109,000 employees worldwide from the Cincinnati-based consumer giant. The pending ghosts of employment cuts are heavy in their homeland. It employs 10,000 people, primarily targets of planned cuts.
It’s not difficult to see why P&G is cutting jobs. Slowing sales puts a lot of pressure on P&G. In the past, the company has targeted activist hedge fund investors who have even emerged as having to cut costs, sell the brand, and have broken the company to jumpstart growth.
Key indicators known as organic sales (excluding the impact of forex and mergers and acquisitions) have increased by just 1% or 2% per quarter since the spring of 2024.
In June, P&G said they had plans. We were sure we could accelerate sales with new product innovations in our pipeline, but we’ll have to invest in them to find money from the cut.
“The need to accelerate investment in growth has accelerated the need for productivity,” CEO Shailesh Jejurikar told investors.
So far, P&G has revealed cuts targeting “non-manufacturing roles” at its 99 factories, including 24 in the US, but the company says it will cut non-plant employment by 15%.
P&G said the cuts would include cutting out some product offerings and perhaps even selling out the brand. However, in a July update, P&G only disclosed disclosures, including narrowing down a variety of female pads in Asia and trimming the company’s international product offerings for its oral care, fabric care and grooming business.
Finally, I remember that P&G was reconstructed
The June announcement recalls P&G announced a massive restructuring at its investment conference held in Boca Raton, Florida in February 2012.
At that meeting, P&G officials announced plans to cut more than 4% of their 5,700 workers or 129,000 employees.
However, P&G’s plans overwhelmed at least one investor: Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Head, acquired $3 billion worth of company stock a few months later, “bloatting” P&G and demanded a major change.
After several months of maneuvering, then Bob McDonald retired in the spring of 2013, and P&G revived and cleaned his predecessor, Ag Lafley. In 2014, Lafrey announced a string of sales of major brands, including IAMS Pet Food, Duracell Battery, and more than 40 beauty brands spun into another company in 2015.
P&G is reduced more deeply when sales don’t bounce
Still, P&G continued to cut sales as they struggled to improve.
In 2017, Trian Partners head Nelson Peltz denounced P&G’s “suffocating bureaucracy” and called for a “flat” organization with fewer management layers before leading one of the biggest proxy fights in corporate history. The company has abandoned thousands more jobs, to 92,000 more since at least the early 1990s.
The company ultimately cut 37,000 jobs from acquisitions and divestment between 2011 and 2018.
Is it mainly shopping? Generated X gets x
A closer look at the previous restructuring of P&G in the 2010s reveals that nearly two-thirds of job cuts have been acquired. Money paid to employees to leave voluntarily. As typical, offers were based on salary and service duration. The company has said goodbye to nearly 22,000 workers, spending more than $2.5 billion, averagering more than $110,000 per employee.
Can P&G achieve the 7,000 job cuts it seeks primarily through acquisitions? The final round of restructuring suggests that it is possible. Over 20,000 workers were paid to leave the company annually by around 3,000 people.
Workers born between 1965 and 1980 will become major candidates for the acquisition as Gen X employees between the ages of 45 and 60 are closer to retirement at a higher salary.
P&G looks at its market, products and brands
P&G has increased the likelihood of selling the brand, but so far they have either stuck with trimming their products or “simplified their portfolio” as explained by current CEO and chairman Jon Moeller.
Specifically, the CEO noted that P&G is considering reviewing individual markets and withdrawing “several categories, brands, and product forms.” This shows that P&G is looking at a map of countries where sales are slow or disappointed.
International markets could be scrutinized in large numbers for cuts as the US, China, Japan, Canada and Western Europe revealed last year that organic sales growth rates were only 2% and “enterprise market” growth was only 1%. P&G has previously left the entire country. Last year, in 2023, it closed its operations in Argentina and Nigeria.
Also get a meticulous look: P&G’s brands and categories are the slowest. When P&G announced the cut, it noted that organic sales performance was disclosed in all 10 product categories for the first nine months of fiscal year 2025.
Among the categories where P&G is stalling was the baby care business (Pampers Diaper Sales), which has 2% slide in sales. Its skin and personal care units (deodorizers, soaps, moisturizers) were on sale.
Can I sell the brand?
So, will P&G cuts lead to sales of home brands?
P&G has chopped up big brands from its roster in the past, but not all sales are flashy or affecting the company’s global customer base. In June, P&G officials hinted at the previous sale of the Vidal Sasson business in China in 2024, as an example of a small sale.
For now, analysts are waiting for details before making predictions.
In a note to investors on July 29, Morningstar analyst Erin Rush characterized the P&G reorganization as “surgical.”
“P&G has revealed its intention to surgically streamline the selection area of product/geographic mix and change the organizational structure composition,” writes Rush. “We see each of these efforts as an opportunity to strengthen that focus.”
There is a leadership shuffle as talent starts at all levels
The expected details regarding the P&G restructuring were announced in late July one day before the CEO’s company’s succession plan.
P&G said the next number one executive will now be second in the current position. Shailesh Jejurikar, 58.
However, when P&G lists new CEOs, the company is inevitably seeing senior managers leave the country. Many may have a dim outlook for top work.
Sure enough, on August 12th, P&G’s beauty business CEO Alexandra Keith (57), announced his retirement in early 2026 after being once a potential future leader for the entire company.
Freddie Balcha, the current president of the personal care department in beauty, was tapped to take over her.
There could be more retirements approaching among top P&G executives.
