According to an email from the company’s board of directors to employees, Friday, the CEO of online mortgage lender Better.com will be “taking time off” from his role after he abruptly fired more than 900 employees via a Zoom call last week.
In a viral video, Vishal Garg told the employees on the call that they “are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off”.
After the mass layoffs, Garg accused the terminated employees of “stealing” from the company by being unproductive, according to Fortune, which confirmed that Garg was writing about the layoffs under an anonymous account on a professional network.
Without sufficient proof, the CEO alleged that “at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours-plus a day in the payroll system,” essentially “stealing” from the company.
Garg received a huge amount of backlash on the Internet after a video of him firing 900 people via Zoom call went viral on the internet.
Garg then soon issued an apology for the way in which he handled the mass layoff.
Garg wrote in a statement addressed to Better.com’s current employees:
“I want to apologize for the way I handled the layoffs last week.”
“I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected and for their contributions to Better.”
Many reports confirmed that the company had hired an outside firm to “do a leadership and cultural assessment.”
The board said in its email:
“The recommendations of this assessment will be taken into account to build a long-term sustainable and positive culture at Better.”
“We have much work to do, and we hope that everyone can refocus on our customers and support each other to continue to build a great company and a company we can be proud of.”
In his absence, CFO Kevin Ryan will take care of the digital mortgage company.
After receiving a cash infusion of $750 million from Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank, Better.com had been preparing to go public through a merger, but the situation involving Garg has caused Better.com to delay the merger.
