VANCOUVER — Social media management platform provider Hootsuite laid off roughly five per cent of its staff on Tuesday in the Vancouver-based company’s second round of layoffs this year.

“As we navigate the current economic and market realities, we are closely monitoring to ensure that the size and costs of our organization fit the size of our business today,” said spokesperson Jodi Echakowitz in an emailed statement to The Logic. “It is clear that we have some areas of duplication, reduced or slowed demand, and layers of management that we are addressing.” 

About five per cent of its staff will leave the business as a result, the company said. 

The five per cent: The news first broke on LinkedIn where several employees posted about being laid off. The workers affected included product managers and at least one developer, as well as people working in partnerships and artificial intelligence. The layoffs were not limited to Canada.

Based on previously available figures, five per cent of staff represents about 50 people.

Layoffs, again: In August, Hootsuite laid off 30 per cent of its staff as part of a restructuring strategy, bringing its total headcount then to just over 1,000. CEO Tom Keiser told The Logic at the time that the company needed “to refocus our strategies to drive efficiency, growth and financial sustainability.”

It’s not the only tech firm to take a second look at staffing in recent months. In late August, Clearco ended most of its operations in markets outside of North America and thus laid off all of its staff in Ireland, the U.K. and Australia. It had already laid off roughly one quarter of its workforce a month earlier. In late September, Toronto-based Q4, which had already laid off eight per cent of its staff in August, said it would lay off 39 people in North America and move their jobs to Latin America, where labour is cheaper.

The backdrop: Rising inflation, interest rate hikes and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine prompted venture capital to pull back and public markets to dry up. The changing economic conditions left entrepreneurs and startups used to a move-fast-and-break-things and grow-at-all-costs mentality to find other ways to extend their financial runways. 

For many, that meant big cuts to headcount. Vancouver-based Thinkific, which offers an online-learning platform, was among the first major Canadian tech firms to do mass layoffs, cutting about one-fifth of its staff in late March. Other big names followed suit: Goodfood, Bonsai, BBTV, WealthSimple, Shopify, Ada and SkipTheDishes, among others. 

What’s next for Hootsuite? Hootsuite had reportedly been planning an initial public offering before the 2021 Christmas holidays. It had hoped to raise $200 million, but put those plans on pause as new tech listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange showed signs of struggle. The market hasn’t rebounded yet. By the third quarter of this year, only one innovation-economy firm had listed on the TSX, compared to 19 in the first three quarters of last year.