600 employees took Paramount Skydance buyouts following RTO mandate

Six hundred employees just packed up their desks and quit their jobs at Paramount Skydance. 

The mass exodus happened after the company, formed by Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global, told employees that they were instating a five-day back-to-office mandate, set to begin on January 5.

The company, led by new CEO David Ellison, let staffers know that if they didn’t plan to come back to the office, they could take a buyout deal starting on September 15. However, the media giant likely didn’t expect to be handing out quite so many severance packages. 

According to company disclosures filed on Monday, around 600 employees in the Los Angeles and New York offices at the vice-president level and below took the deal, which reportedly cost Paramount Skydance $185 million in “restructuring changes.”

While the company may be trimming employees, it doesn’t seem to be trimming spending. The company called for “incremental programming investments in 2026 in excess of $1.5 billion.” Paramount said it had already trimmed about 1,000 employees earlier this year and expects to cut around 1,600 more, as the company moves to divest both Televisión Federal in Argentina and Chilevision in Chile in an attempt to “ensure continued focus.” 

The restructuring comes after Ellison took charge of the company post-merger and pressed the importance of in-person work. 

“I believe that in-person collaboration is absolutely vital to building and strengthening our culture and driving the success of our business,” Ellison wrote in a September memo. “Our people are the key to winning, and being together helps us innovate, solve problems, share ideas, create, challenge one another, and build relationships that will make this company great.”

Still, an $185 million price tag seems a tad excessive for more collaboration. Either way, Paramount is not the only media giant to enforce a return-to-office mandate.

NBCUniversal recently announced workers would have to return to the office at least four days a week, in a similar policy beginning in January. Comcast, the parent company of NBCU, previously did the same. 

While employees leaving in large numbers due to such mandates seems like a major upheaval, some research says that is the point (at least in part). According to a 2024 Bamboo HR report, back-to-office mandates can help companies avoid layoffs. Per the report, nearly 2 in 5 managers, directors, and executives (37%) say their company enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. Likewise, 25% of VP and C-suite executives and nearly 1 in 5 HR pros (18%) say they actually hoped employees would voluntarily leave amid mandates.

Either way, back-to-office mandates are fairly unpopular, so the true cost to companies remains to be seen. However, when it comes to media giants, at least, some of the cost will trickle down to the customer. Paramount Skydance is planning to raise Paramount+ subscription prices starting January 15. Both the Essential (ad-supported) plan and Premium (ad-free) plan will go up by $1, to $8.99 and $13.99 per month, respectively. 

“Our ongoing investments in Paramount+ are enhancing the value we deliver to consumers,” Ellison said. “To support this continued investment, we plan to implement price increases in the U.S. early in the first quarter of 2026.”

View the full article