After years of aggressive expansion—adding thousands of employees each year across Denmark and worldwide—Novo Nordisk has hit the pause button. In an e-mail to DR News, the pharmaceutical giant confirmed that it has imposed an immediate, worldwide freeze on all non-critical hiring.
The move is the first concrete step in the cost-cutting drive promised by the company’s leadership. Outgoing CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen warned in his final DR interview on 6 August that workforce reductions were inevitable:
“When you resize a company, some areas have to shrink. We probably won’t avoid layoffs.”
His successor, Mike Doustdar, who took over the next day, pledged to unveil a single, fast-acting savings plan rather than a drawn-out series of smaller cuts.
“I’m fast. I want to do it faster than other leaders would,” Doustdar told DR, adding, “but I’m not reckless. I don’t like the salami method.”
According to DR’s economics correspondent Casper Schrøder, the hiring freeze is both a financial necessity and a strategic signal.
“With impatient shareholders watching billions evaporate, Novo Nordisk needs to show it’s taking control,” Schrøder said. “Stopping recruitment is the quickest, most visible way to do that.”