Most layoff announcements draw anger. Canva’s is drawing applause.
Co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins announced on Tuesday that a sweeping restructuring will affect 1,271 employees, or 22% of the Sydney-based design company’s workforce. Her note to staff, which she also shared on LinkedIn, quickly became an online case study in how to cut jobs, largely because of what Canva is giving the people who leave.
Jasveer Singh, co-founder and CEO of KnotDating, called it “a master-class in how to handle layoffs” and described Perkins’s announcement as “thoughtful, honest and generous,” Newsweek reported. Mark Di Stefano, Rear Window editor at the Australian Financial Review, called the package “exceedingly generous.”
Commenters on Perkins’s LinkedIn post struck a similar note. “Really impressive, empathetic, transparent, and generous way to communicate what was undoubtedly a very hard decision,” one wrote, according to Fast Company. On Instagram, the praise turned to envy. “How do I apply to be fired by Canva?” one user asked, American Bazaar reported.
The goodwill comes at a delicate moment. Perkins wrote that Canva’s growth slowed this year for the first time in a decade, and in August the company cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%, the Australian Financial Review reported.
For some of the 1,271, the restructuring means new roles or a request to relocate, with Sydney becoming the main base for more product teams. For others, it means leaving the company. Canva has not said how many will lose their jobs.
In her note, Perkins said the company is “simplifying layers, consolidating overlapping responsibilities, and ensuring teams have the right mix of skills and experience for the chapter ahead.” As Canva grew, she explained, work was divided among more specialized teams, leading to “fragmented ownership” and making it harder to see the bigger picture. The goal, she said, is “getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams with the freedom to make decisions, take ownership, and focus on what matters most for our community.”
A Canva spokesperson told Fortune these roles are not being replaced by AI. “AI is changing what’s possible for our community and the kinds of products we’re now building. That also changes how we need to organize our teams and the skills we’ll need. These changes are about setting Canva up to build those products, not using AI to do the work of people who are leaving.”
Fortune, which put Perkins on its cover in 2022, has reported that the restructuring is part of a broader AI-driven rethink of the company.
What departing Canva employees get
Departing employees will receive at least six months’ salary, inclusive of statutory entitlements, regardless of location. On top of that, they’ll receive 12 months of continued healthcare coverage in countries where Canva already provides it.
Other perks include career transition support, complete with one-on-one coaching, interview preparation and a year of LinkedIn Premium. Employees leaving the company can also take their company MacBooks with them, and Canva is removing the one-year vesting cliff for people who joined in the past year.
And it doesn’t stop there. Through a new Canva Collective Fund, eligible departing employees can apply for $10,000 grants to pursue an idea, start a business or launch a project, without Canva taking any equity or ownership in what they create. Applications close Dec. 14.
The company said it has already received applications for a wide range of ideas, including writing and publishing a book, building a sustainable farming venture and going back to school. Canva has not disclosed how many grants it plans to award.
Oracle’s ceiling is Canva’s floor
The average severance package in the tech industry was 11.2 weeks of pay in 2024, according to a 2025 report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, near the bottom of the industries it tracked.
Canva’s minimum of six months, or roughly 26 weeks, is more than double that. It also matches the most anyone could get from Oracle, which laid off an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 employees in March and offered U.S. workers four weeks of base pay for their first year of service, plus one additional week for each subsequent year, capped at 26 weeks.
Severance is moving in two directions
Not every company is getting more generous. In an October study by global talent and workforce solutions company LHH, 56% of surveyed U.S. companies said they had made their severance policies more generous over the past two years, down from 76% in the firm’s previous study. The share that made them less generous jumped to 38% from 9%.
Tech is leaning the other way. In the IT services and technology sector, 64% of respondents reported making their policies more generous, compared with 28% who made them less generous, according to additional data LHH shared with Fortune. The firm cautioned that the subgroup findings are directional.
“Severance and career transition support are standard at many companies,” Russell Williams, SVP of Career Transition & Mobility at LHH, told Fortune. “Seeing all of it in one package is the exception, not the rule.”
Why companies pay more to say goodbye
Williams said employers are paying more attention to how they treat departing employees, recognizing that it matters to their business.
“People notice. That includes the ones leaving, the ones staying and the ones the company will want to hire down the road,” he said. “How a company handles exits is one of the biggest signals it sends to the team it’s counting on next.”
And layoffs aren’t exactly rare these days. In a 2026 global study by LHH, 73% of surveyed employees said they had witnessed layoffs on their teams in the past year. Employees also reported heavier workloads, lower morale and lost trust in leadership following layoffs.
As for Canva’s package, Williams offered a different way to measure its value: “But we’d argue the goal isn’t necessarily the most generous severance package. It’s the most effective transition package, one that helps people find real stability quickly.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
