Over 800 WhiteHat Jr Employees Resign After Company Ends 'Work From Home': Report

More than 800 employees of WhiteHat Jr have reportedly put in their papers in the last two months after being asked to work from the office. According to an Inc42 report, WhiteHat Jr, a platform to learn to code acquired by BYJU¡¯S, had asked its employees to return to the office within a month.

The decision to end 'work from home' was announced in a company-wide email on March 18.

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The company asked all its remote employees to return to the office by April 18.

Inc42 report states that unwilling to return to the office, over 800 employees decided to resign. The resignations came from full-time employees of the sales, coding, and math teams.

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The report hints that more employees will be quitting in the upcoming months. One of the resigned employees spoke to Inc42 and said, "Some have kids, some have aged and sick parents, while others have other responsibilities. It is not right to call back employees in such a short period of time."

The former employee said that the 'return to office' policy could be the company's cost-cutting measure as they were running in losses.

The employee was quoted in the report as saying, "The company was clearly running in losses. This was a cost-cutting exercise to reduce its expenses without ruining their name in the market," they said.

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Another ex-employee weighed in and said that their salaries could be another factor for mass resignation.

At the time of hiring, employees were told about their job location ¨C WhiteHat Jr has offices in Gurugram, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. However, after working from home for two years, employees were under the impression that their salaries should be revised to match living costs in expensive cities.

"This was a well-planned and managed layoff that WhiteHat Jr did," another former employee added in the same report.

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In 2020, Whitehat Jr was sold to BYJU'S in a $300 million all-cash deal. An employee blamed BYJU'S culture and said,

"Subconsciously, we knew something like this would happen after BYJU¡¯S acquired WhiteHat Jr last year. We all know what sort of an employer BYJU¡¯S is."

In their statement given to Inc42, WhiteHat Jr said,

"As part of our back-to-work drive, most of our Sales and Support employees have been asked to report to Gurgaon and Mumbai offices from April 18. We have made exceptions for medical and personal exigencies and have offered relocation assistance as required. Our teachers will continue to work from home,"

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