Samsung is one of the biggest names in the consumer electronics world, and regardless of how you feel about the company it’s very hard to argue with that fact. Samsung is not just Samsung Electronics, which is itself not just all about smartphones, as there’s a huge amount of things that Samsung manufacturers and promotes across the world. Given the overall size of the Samsung Group, it’s not surprising that the firm feels the need to downsize somewhat. In fact, Samsung has been looking to downsize and “streamline” their overall operations. What might be surprising, however, is that Samsung has laid off more employees during the first half of 2016 than most other companies.
According to a report from the Korea Herald, the Samsung Group has let 5,284 employees go across 54 different subsidiaries during the first half of 2016. Many of these lay-offs were already scheduled, but given the recent Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, it’s likely more lay-offs will be added to the already-existing list. Samsung Electronics, often referred to as the “crown jewel” of the Samsung Group lost 3,579 employees during this time period bringing the total to 95,420 employees. Samsung SDI, the firm responsible for many of the world’s batteries, lost 1,741 employees and has a plan in place to lose 12,000 employees before 2016 is done with. Meanwhile, lesser-known companies of the 109 that make up the Samsung Group, such as Samsung Heavy Industries lost 1,756 employees while Samsung Electro-Mechanics lost 1,697 employees.
While it’s easy to see that these job cuts were a result of the recent Galaxy Note 7 failure, the majority of these have been planned for some time now. The Samsung Group is absolutely massive, and there are lots of different companies that have perhaps gotten a little too big over the years and now Samsung is trying to clean things up to create better organization, and no doubt help their bottom line, too. Samsung Electronics has shrunk a little bit as a result of the near 4,000 employees that have left this year, but employing over 95,000 employees is still a big deal. The Galaxy Note 7 is definitely going to have a long-lasting impact on the firm, but the firm is likely to recover in 2017.