Former employees at Smith+Nephew (NYSE:SNN) say the device developer’s recent layoffs went beyond what the company has publicly acknowledged.
MassDevice was first to report layoffs by Watford, England–based Smith+Nephew to its orthopedics business this month, with the company confirming about 150 job eliminations in Memphis, Tennessee
Now, employees in other parts of the U.S. who work in two of the company’s major businesses — sports medicine and advanced wound care — tell MassDevice that they and other employees were laid off shortly before Thanksgiving. (We’re not naming these former employees to avoid hurting their ability to find new jobs in medtech.)
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“No good explanation other than the analytics they have been following for two years weren’t looking great,” one former employee said. “They shut everything down for me and many others that day. Very abrupt and unexpected.”
Another former employee said layoffs in their business started around November 2023, with waves of job eliminations through promotions, demotions and layoffs, coupled with outsourcing to Costa Rica.
Smith+Nephew declined to confirm the full extent of its recent layoffs or answer other questions from MassDevice, but offered a brief statement today in response to our request for more details.
“In recent weeks we have made a number of changes to increase our business efficiency and performance,” the company said. “The largest single people impact by far was in Memphis, as previously reported.”
Smith+Nephew is the world’s 24th-largest medical device company (according to Medical Design & Outsourcing‘s 2024 Medtech Big 100 ranking by revenue) and the fifth-largest orthopedic device company.
Last month, three major investors asked Smith+Nephew to explore spinning off its struggling orthopedics division.
In September, the device developer put its 300,000-square-foot office campus outside Memphis up for sale in September. Real estate firm JLL has the listing and said it was helping Smith+Nephew with “its search for a new, long-term relocation in the Memphis area.”
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