Corporate offices at McDonald’s will be closed for three days this week amid layoffs by the fast-food giant, the company said in an internal email.
U.S. employees will learn their fates virtually as they work from home between Monday and Wednesday, the memo said, according to the Wall Street Journal. They were reportedly told to cancel any in-person meetings with clients outside the company.
Some international employees were also told to work from home through Wednesday, the email said.
The layoffs come about three months after CEO Chris Kempczinski referenced plans to cut jobs in a January memo to staffers, saying the company sought to introduce an organizational structure with less segmentation of divisions.
“We will evaluate roles and staffing levels in parts of the organization and there will be difficult discussions and decisions ahead,” Kempszinski wrote at the time, according to CNN Business. “Certain initiatives will be de-prioritized or stopped altogether. This will help us move faster as an organization, while reducing our global costs and freeing up resources to invest in our growth.”
McDonald’s has not disclosed how many employees will be laid off. More than 150,000 people worked in corporate roles or at company-owned restaurants as of February, the company said at the time. About 30% of those employees worked in the U.S.
The chain previously employed 235,000 at those levels in 2017 and 205,000 in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal.
McDonald’s, which is based in Chicago, is one of the several major companies to announce or carry out layouts this year. Amazon, Disney and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — are among the others.