A message from Justworks CEO Mike Seckler

Today, I am announcing a tough decision I have made. I am reducing the size of our team by nearly 200 people, and teams across the business will be saying goodbye to dedicated Justworkers. 

Jeri and I spoke to those impacted earlier this morning. We are also providing opportunities for everyone departing to have a 1 on 1 discussion, and we will email them shortly with more details on their next steps. To everyone leaving: I apologize for how this decision impacts you and take full responsibility for how we got here. We are all here to support you during this transition.

Below, I want to share why I made this decision, how we’re supporting impacted Justworkers, and the path ahead.

Why We’re Doing This

Justworks plays an essential role for the small businesses we serve. For this reason, we must always maintain a strong financial position and be resilient to potential adverse events—a recession, rising interest rates, a trade war, etc.—that could impact them. 

We have historically done this well. We haven’t raised outside equity capital since January 2020, and after that, we had several years of profitable operations. 

Two years ago, however, we accelerated investment and innovation to help more types of small businesses in more ways. We launched Justworks Payroll, began serving customers in new industries, gave small businesses health insurance optionality, and—with Justworks International—began helping even the smallest companies confidently hire and employ people across the world.  

Although our new offerings are resonating with customers and accelerating our growth, I was too optimistic about two things: 

1. I expected white-collar small businesses (who still make up the majority of our current customer base) to return to pre-pandemic levels of hiring. This has not occurred and as we make money on a per-employee-per-month basis, it remains a headwind to our financial results.  

2. I believed we would be able to bring our new offerings to market at scale more quickly than we have done. 

Because my most fundamental task as CEO is to ensure that Justworks remains strong for the small businesses who depend on us, I decided to reduce headcount and rethink the way we are operating to increase focus, speed, and growth.

How We Approached This Decision

In making this decision, I worked with the leadership team to optimize for the following objectives guided by our core values:

• Increase Resilience - With this decision, we create more time for our transformation to take hold and increase our resilience to factors outside of our control. It positions us well to return to profitability in early 2027, regardless of whether the outside environment becomes more challenging and without needing additional equity capital.

• Better Align Structure to Strategy - We are using this moment to accelerate the organizational changes necessary to bring multiple Justworks products together for customers in a beautifully seamless “One Justworks” way. 

• Make It Easier To Do Great Work - We will create an environment that simplifies how work gets done across the company, pushes all of us closer to customers, and enables our teams to move with greater speed.

With these objectives in mind, we changed certain team structures and consolidated certain roles. For everyone remaining, I will share more about these changes tomorrow morning. You can also expect to learn more via in-depth functional meetings and a dedicated all-hands discussion this week.

What This Means for Those Leaving

To all those who are leaving today, I know this is difficult, and I want to acknowledge how challenging this must feel. While no conversation or context can fully soften the impact of losing one's job, we will be offering meaningful support, including:

• Severance: Every departing employee will be eligible to receive 12 weeks of base pay, with 2 additional weeks of pay for every year of service starting at 4 years and beyond. Partial years of service will be rounded to the nearest full year.

• Equity: We will waive the vesting cliff for departing employees who worked at Justworks for less than 1 year, and we will also extend the option exercise window for all departing employees.

• Healthcare: For our U.S.-based employees, we will cover 3 months of continued health insurance coverage through COBRA, with 1 additional month covered for every year of service starting at 4 years and beyond. Partial years of service will be rounded to the nearest full year. For our employees in Canada and Mexico, we will provide for 3 months of health insurance via continuing coverage and a premium stipend, respectively.

• Alumni Founder Discount: If you decide to start a business in the future, you can use Justworks at no cost for your company’s first year and at a discounted rate thereafter.

• Wellness Support: We will provide a 6-month subscription to Wellhub, which is a platform designed to connect you with options for fitness, mindfulness, nutrition, and sleep.

• Career Support: We will provide 90 days of continued access to LinkedIn Learning to support your transition to a new role and you can keep your Justworks-issued laptop as a personal device to aid in your job search. U.S.-based employees will also be able to access job placement support through Health Advocate.

• Immigration Support: For impacted employees who are in the U.S. on work visas, we are committed to supporting you in navigating the complexity of your transition. 

For a company like ours—whose purpose is to help people realize their potential—I recognize that regardless of the support provided, this news will be tough to process. You have played an important role shaping Justworks into the company it is today, and I want each of you to feel respected even in the context of this transition. Shortly, you will receive an email with details on the above and your next steps.

Our Path Forward

To all those remaining: As you begin to process these changes, remember the journey we are on and the small businesses we serve. Our communities depend on them, but their road to success is a hard one. Every day, they overcome tough odds to make their businesses work. But when they succeed, they create jobs that give meaning to millions of people’s lives. Small businesses deserve the best, and yet they have not historically received it.  

Justworks exists to change this state of the world. We aspire to show up as the partner that small businesses have always deserved but never had before. Our strategy for manifesting this aspiration is the right one, and we have good signs that it is working. We have signed up 30% more new customers than last fiscal year, and our customer satisfaction and retention metrics are at all-time highs.  

And so, while difficult, these changes put Justworks in a strong position to complete our transformation and reach every small business out there who needs a true partner on their journey. 

The substantial opportunity ahead of us is possible because of the hard work each of you has put into building our company and caring for our customers. Reflecting on this fact makes today especially sad, as we part ways with colleagues who have contributed so much to Justworks. 

We’ll spend today doing everything we can to create a smooth exit for those departing. Then, we’ll focus on what lies ahead. 

Mike