The reduction in primarily salaried employees will reduce costs for the consumer goods company and is intended to allow for new products or strategies and eventual growth. These jobs will be eliminated by the end of 2015.
“What else can we do to create more capacity to invest in our business, to invest in growth ideas, to invest in innovation? And our business teams around the company really rallied to that and came up with an aggressive plan. And it's never easy to do these things, and these are people's jobs and employees' lives that are affected by it. But it is something that we need to do to allow us to invest and grow the business,” said Thomas Falk, executive chairman, CEO, president and member of executive committee, on Kimberly-Clark’s Q3 earnings conference call Wednesday (transcript provided by TheStreet).
Company restructuring
These cuts come as part of the ongoing restructuring of the consumer goods company. Kimberly-Clark is spinning off its health care business to form Halyard Health, a publically traded company. That business has been weak recently. By contract, the personal care segment brings in nearly half of Kimberly-Clark’s total revenue.
Personal Care numbers
Organic personal care sales for Kimberly-Clark International were up 12% for the quarter. Though, “in North America, personal care organic sales were down slightly,” said Mark Buthman, CFP and SVP, on the call Wednesday.