Paighten HarkinsMonths after Qualtrics paid billions to acquire a leading health care experience and data analytics company, the Utah-founded “experience management” company announced sweeping layoffs this week.
Qualtrics, which has headquarters in both Provo and Seattle, is not releasing the number of employees who lost their jobs, nor more specific information about what global locations or roles were impacted, but reporting from GeekWire indicates the company cut jobs in Utah, Washington and overseas.
The cuts were part of a “restructuring” meant to “better align with [Qualtrics’] long-term priorities,” the company said Friday in a provided statement.
When Qualtrics acquired Press Ganey Forsta for $6.75 billion in May, it lauded the move as one of the biggest acquisitions made by a Utah company, and said the purchase combined the “world’s largest proprietary Experience Management AI and data platform with the world’s largest healthcare experience data set,” according to a statement released then.
While gaining Press Ganey Forsta was a “defining milestone for Qualtrics,” it also meant, according to Friday’s statement, “two organizations, two sets of teams, two structures built independently with their own ways of working.”
“Bringing the two companies together meant making hard decisions about what the organization needed to operate and function as a single, uniform team,” the statement continued.
Paighten is an Enterprise reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune. She covers a variety of topics, including business, health, growth and the legal justice system — sometimes all at once. She is from southern Oklahoma, and lived and worked in the state, most recently at the Tulsa World, before starting at The Tribune in October 2017.