Design software program large Canva has halted regular operations throughout its 5300-strong world workforce for 5 days of nothing however AI studying and hackathons, bucking the worldwide wave of expertise giants which have slashed jobs, citing the expertise.
Dubbed “AI Discovery Week”, this system includes greater than 60 talks and workshop classes, audio system flown in from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and a pizza celebration that, by one Canva govt’s measurement, demolished 50 metres of pizza in 27 minutes.
The transfer comes after WiseTech International, Block and Atlassian have all lowered headcount up to now six months, with executives in some circumstances pointing to synthetic intelligence as the explanation productiveness positive aspects made the cuts doable.
Canva’s stop-work program is non-obligatory, not obligatory, however has led to a Sydney workplace that’s so full this week that employees are struggling to discover a desk.
Jennie Rogerson, Canva’s chief individuals officer and the girl who designed this system, says it’s a direct response to rampant demand from employees themselves.
“We do a biannual individuals ballot the place we hear from our groups on what they need,” Rogerson stated in an interview from Sydney. “What they wished was time and house to have a look at AI and tinker with it and discover and study.”
The occasion is a manifestation of billionaire Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins’ optimism that AI will make groups extra environment friendly and artistic, however comes amid a tense backdrop of a rising variety of software program corporations racing to switch some human employees with AI.
Rogerson stated Canva was not shying away from that sense of unease. “On any given day you would possibly really feel bored, excited, scared, underwhelmed, overwhelmed. There are numerous feelings that include this type of change, and that’s fully wonderful,” she stated she advised employees on the kick-off to AI Discovery Week.
“What we attempt to facilitate is basically open conversations … Any job is an evolution, and AI has simply sped up that evolution. Sure, the work that you simply do right this moment could also be automated.”
Her counter-argument is that automation has, to this point inside Canva, redeployed relatively than changed.
She pointed to “Vibe and Thrive”, an inside Canva profit the place employees as soon as peppered the individuals crew with tickets asking how they might spend their wellness allowance. AI now handles most of these queries. The people who used to reply them, she stated, are engaged on one thing else now, one thing Canva considers higher-impact.
Co-founder and chief working officer Cliff Obrecht stated: ”The tempo of change is in contrast to something I’ve seen earlier than, and the groups studying quickest are those getting hands-on.”
“That’s why we’re pausing enterprise as ordinary and giving all 5000-plus Canvanauts the time and house to get curious, experiment, and construct.”
Jose Gato, an operations enterprise associate inside Canva’s individuals org, is likely one of the employees who has spent the week inside that guess. Final 12 months’s Discovery Week, he stated, gave him time to construct one thing he had assumed would require a software program engineer. Gato and Rogerson have been made out there for interview by Canva.
“There’s typically an over-index on the concept AI will change human work,” he stated. “The shift feels much less like ‘AI will take your job’ and extra that individuals utilizing AI successfully will increase the benchmark for what’s doable.
“There’s house to be each nervous and excited on the identical time,” he stated, including that the week has included pointed classes on accountable deployment, environmental price and the place human judgment ought to nonetheless maintain.
Canva is likely one of the few software program firms to completely keep away from main layoffs amid the market tumult of the previous 5 years. In the course of the pandemic, headcount ballooned from 1000 to 4000. Then, in 2024 and 2025, the corporate quietly tightened. Rogerson stated that when backfilling, Canva utilized two rules to virtually each new position: was it bringing “web new expertise” the corporate didn’t have already got, or “web new management” for an rising space?
That tapering occurs to coincide with the interval through which generative AI started doing severe work inside the corporate. Rogerson is adamant the slowdown is about self-discipline relatively than displacement.
The hackathon is predicted to supply software program that results in prospects’ palms: Rogerson factors to “About Me” – the personalisation function Canva unveiled at its Create convention in Los Angeles this 12 months – as a hackathon concept that grew to become an actual product.
Engagement round AI, she stated, has additionally visibly broadened past the engineers. Finance groups have run framework workshops on “conserving people within the loop” whereas the Canva cooks have begun utilizing AI to design menus that higher mirror the nationalities represented within the workforce.
Rogerson joined as an govt assistant six years in the past, when Canva employed 450 individuals. She is now liable for the careers of greater than 5300 individuals, and designed the week supposed to form how all of them work alongside machines that didn’t exist when she began.
The metric she has chosen to evaluate the week by is buried within the individuals ballot. One query asks whether or not employees are proud of the ratio of impactful work to busy work.
“If that rating goes up, I’ll really feel prefer it was profitable,” she stated.
“When completed properly, expertise like AI can actually assist to make groups extra environment friendly. That’s the utopia of what we are able to construct.
“Nevertheless it’s worthwhile being very open-minded and conscious of potential pitfalls.”
The Market Recap publication is a wrap of the day’s buying and selling. Get it every weekday afternoon.
David Swan is the expertise editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was beforehand expertise editor for The Australian newspaper.Join by way of X or e mail.
Leave a Reply