Bayer has let go of about 13,500 employees, including around 5,000 managers, since implementing a new operating model in early 2024. CEO Bill Anderson said in a recent earnings call that he expects a slower rate of headcount reduction moving forward.
While Bayer’s workforce cuts continued in the third quarter of 2025, the pace slowed slightly and should continue slowing, according to the pharma’s CEO. Based on employee counts in second- and third-quarter earnings statements, the company was down 1,054 people at the end of Q3, a 1% quarter-over-quarter decrease and less than Q2’s 1.4% dip from Q1.
Germany-based Bayer has now let go of about 13,500 employees since rolling out its dynamic shared ownership (DSO) model in January 2024, according to the company’s latest earnings presentation. The shift came after CEO Bill Anderson expressed disappointment in company performance.
During a Q3 earnings call Wednesday, Anderson said that moving forward, he anticipates that cuts will continue but will just be “incremental attrition.” He added that there will be a decrease in crop science employment, as Bayer is looking to improve profitability in that area.
“So, I think you should expect to see [headcount is] going to continue to go down, but it’s not going to go down at the same rate that it has for the last 18 months,” he said.
Regarding what’s taken place during those 18 months, Anderson noted the company had to do major surgery to implement its DSO model that involves far fewer layers of the business. For example, he said, Bayer has gone from about 15,000 managers to roughly 5,000.
“We kept the great majority of the talent that we need to drive our progress, but we took out the gatekeepers that, frankly, in all large multinationals, they just slow everything down and prevent us from being immediately responsive to customer needs or driving forward with innovations,” Anderson said. “We have sort of now weekly examples that are coming through of products that are launching in record time.”
Bayer is one of six Big Pharma companies whose recent and planned layoffs since the biopharma bubble burst could result in over 39,000 jobs lost, based on BioSpace tallies.
