Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) told employees May 9 they could face another round of layoffs if the number of workers who accept buyouts don't meet the company's targets, according to OregonLive. Adding insult to injury, future severance packages may not be as generous as the current packages, the warning stated.
Intel is cutting 12,000 jobs across the company -- about 11 percent of the workforce -- amid the shift from a PC-centric world to cloud and data center computing. The chip giant announced the layoffs after delivering a less-than-optimistic PC market forecast in April 2016.
Some of the cuts will involve buyouts. But then Intel on May 9 sent a memo to employees who were invited to participate in the company's Voluntary Separation Program. According to OregonLive, the memo stated:
"If we don't meet our targets, we will take follow-on actions, including involuntary headcount reductions. Those impacted by these follow-on actions may not receive packages comparable to the ones currently on offer."
The memo also said the buyouts are "market leading and the highest offered by Intel in the past several years," OregonLive reported. Employees have until June 2 to make their decision, the paper said. ChannelE2E has not independently confirmed the memo's existence.
Despite the ongoing cuts, Intel remains active in the IT channel. Company officials evangelized MSP-focused solutions at Lenovo Accelerate 2016 in Orlando, Fla., this week. And the company is hosting the Intel Security Americas Partner Summit 2016 in Boca Raton, Fla., later this week.
Intel isn't alone in its job cuts. IBM also made an undisclosed number of layoffs in 2016 amid that company's shift from hardware and software to cloud, mobile, big data (cognitive computing) and security solutions. IBM has called the cuts a "rebalancing" of talent to address emerging market opportunities.
