Denver-based Evolve is letting go of another 175 workers just four months after it dismissed 164 workers in response to a big drop-off in the vacation home rental market.
The company, which describes itself as the “fastest-growing vacation rental hospitality company in North America,” manages properties on behalf of 30,000 owners and has hosted 10 million guests, according to its website.
September’s job reduction, representing about a fifth of the staff, is part of a larger transition called Evolve 3.0 that Brian Egan, co-founder and CEO, described in a letter to employees last month.
Egan said as he was scrutinizing how resources at the company were allocated — “every dollar and every hour, both payroll and non-payroll, all of it” — he realized he had to go beyond the millions of dollars in non-payroll savings and reduce the headcount.
“The hard truth is that while we have a talented, hard-working and passionate team, and the vast majority of our work has a positive impact on our business, not all of our resources are being allocated to the very few things that will most clearly and powerfully move the needle on value creation and elevate the experiences of our Owners, Guests and Evolvers,” he wrote.
Egan described the May layoffs as defensive in nature responding to a “precipitous shortfall” in revenue. He said the latest round was strategic and designed to put the company on a firmer footing.
On Tuesday, drugmaker Pfizer informed the Colorado Department of Labor that it planned to let go of an undisclosed number of employees at a research facility it operates at 3200 Walnut St. in Boulder.
“This action is expected to be permanent. The employee separations are expected to occur on December 4, 2023,” wrote Pam Jefferson in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act or WARN letter.
On its website, Pfizer said it employs nearly 300 people at a 150,000-square-foot facility with specialized labs and equipment located on 4.5 acres in Boulder. The location, acquired from Array BioPharma in 2019 during a merger, specializes in small-molecule drug discovery and will remain open.
“Pfizer continues to hone its R&D footprint and focus on areas where its capabilities are differentiated, aiming to reduce cycle times further through optimization of its end-to-end R&D operations. As part of this effort, we have made the very difficult decision to reduce the footprint of our Boulder organization and to transition some research programs to other facilities,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Employers nationally have announced 146,305 job cuts in the third quarter, a 92% increase from 76,284 cuts announced in the same quarter last year, according to Chicago-based global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.
Through the first nine months of the year, companies have planned 604,514 cuts, which is nearly triple the 209,495 job cuts announced during the same period last year.
Aside from the 2.08 million cuts announced during the first nine months of 2020, when the pandemic hit the economy hard, the layoff tally is the highest seen since 2009, when 1.14 million jobs were cut in the first three quarters.
“Employers are grappling with inflation, rate increases, labor issues and consumer demand as we enter Q4,” Andrew Challenger, a senior vice president with the firm, said in the report.
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