Business
Nestlé is laying off over 16,000 employees under its new CEO—and says a key motivator is ‘automation’
Nestlé will lay off 16,000 employees worldwide as recently-appointed CEO Philipp Navratil looks to turn around the world’s largest food company.
In a bid to cut costs, Nestlé will slash 12,000 white-collar jobs along with an additional 4,000 manufacturing and supply-chain positions, reducing 6% of its global workforce over the next two years, the company announced Thursday. Some white-collar roles will be automated as the firm targets “operational efficiency,” the company said in the statement.
“We are transforming how we work,” Navratil wrote in a LinkedIn post that also shared his company’s earnings report and layoff announcement. “We are evolving and will simplify our organization and automate our processes.”
For the first nine months of 2025, Nestlé’s sales fell 1.9% to around $82.8 billion, compared to the same period last year. Organic sales, which excludes currency and acquisition effects, rose 3.3% in the same period, signaling improved business performance despite currency headwinds making the numbers look worse.
“This initiative is focused on transforming our ways of working, streamlining the organization and processes, and leveraging digitalization and automation,” a Nestlé spokesperson told Fortune.
The workforce reduction will affect workers globally, the spokesperson said, but “it will affect each market in a different way, and each market will prepare its own plan,” they added. “We are not in a position to share more details at this stage.”
The maker of brands such as KitKat and Nesquik named Navratil its new CEO last month after dismissing long-time company executive Laurent Frexie, who served as chief executive for one year before an undisclosed romantic relationship with a subordinate came to light.
Navratil is now tasked with steering the company through a period of consumer demand headwinds in response to price increases and preferences shifting away from processed foods, which has prompted consumer packaged goods companies to shift its supply chains, Fortune previously reported.
“The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change faster,” Navratil said in the company disclosure. “This will include making hard but necessary decisions to reduce headcount over the next two years… Along with other measures, we are working to substantially reduce our costs.”
