WATERLOO, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) will let go approximately 2,000 employees this year and make changes to its executive structure as part of a “cost optimization program”, the BlackBerry-maker said Monday.
The job cuts will trim the company’s global workforce by more than 10% to about 17,000 people. RIM said that it will notify impacted employees in North America and certain other countries this week, and that the remainder of the global workforce reductions will occur at a later date subject to local laws and regulations. All impacted employees will receive severance packages and outplacement support.
“The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company and it follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone”, reads the company’s statement. It promised to provide more details of the layoffs during its quarterly conference call on September 15.
It also explained that the cost optimization program “is focused on eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources to focus on areas that offer the highest growth opportunities and alignment with RIM’s strategic objectives.”
In addition to the layoffs, RIM upped the responsibilities of some of its senior management. Thorsten Heins will oversee all product engineering functions at the company in the expanded role of COO, product and sales, while Patrick Spence will take on the role of managing director, global sales and regional marketing.
CIO Robin Bienfait will now also oversee the enterprise business unit; David Yach, in his role as CTO, software, will focus on current and future software platforms, as well as the surrounding developer and application ecosystem; while Jim Rowan is taking on the expanded role of COO, operations, and together with CFO Brian Bidulka, will oversee the cost-cutting program.
Separately, the company announced that BlackBerry COO Don Morrison will retire after more than ten years with RIM. He is currently on a temporary medical leave.
