Over 800 WhiteHat Jr Employees Resign When Asked To Return To Office: Report

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In emails sent to its employees on March 18, WhiteHat Jr asked them to return to office within a month.

More than 800 full-time employees of WhiteHat Jr, a platform to learn coding, have resigned in the last two months after being asked to return to office, according to a report in Inc42. These employees resigned voluntarily as they did not want to return to office, the report further said.

WhiteHat Jr was acquired by Byju’s in 2020.

In emails sent to its employees on March 18, WhiteHat Jr asked them to return to its offices in various locations, such as Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram within a month, Inc42 said. But instead of adhering to office order, what followed was en masse resignation, the report further said.

A few employees Inc42 spoke to said it’s a cost-cutting exercise and added that more resignations are expected to come.

They also said that things changed after Byju’s acquisition and the exit of WhiteHat Jr founder Karan Bajaj. The employees told Inc42 that things were smooth till Mr Bajaj was at the helm of affairs. He left the company in August 2021, a year after Byju’s bought the start-up for $300 million.

The company, meanwhile, issued a statement in which it 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.”

Elsewhere, in the tech world, Apple employees are also protesting the company’s directions asking them to work from office for three days a week.

According to a report in The Vergeearlier this month, Ian Goodfellow, the director of machine learning, resigned earlier this month due to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s push to get employees back into the office.

Fortune published the results of a survey conducted between April 13 and 19 this year, which showed that 76 per cent of the employees surveyed were unhappy with the company’s return-to-work policy.