Employees were not forced to resign, claims BYJU's

Bengaluru: BYJU's said the company has not forced its staff to resign or face termination. The exercise is only part of the 5% workforce reduction that was announced earlier in October. The edtech firm had said it will be letting around 2,500 people from its 50,000 staff.

Recently, the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) has claimed that BYJU's is forcing its employees at the Bengaluru headquarters to resign. A similar report was heard earlier from Thiruvananthapuram as well. The company decided to shut operations at the Technopark campus and around 140 employees out of the 170 approached the state labour department.

An official statement from the company said: "It is absolutely false that BYJU's is forcing employees to resign. BYJU's is a responsible organisation and follows all the laws of the land. BYJU'S employs nearly 50,000 people across India. Around 5% of these positions are being rationalised as part of the current strategic plan to grow profitably and sustainably."

Earlier, the edtech unicorn had said the workforce reduction will be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams in a phased manner. In today's statement, the management said each employee affected by the restructuring is informed individually.

"BYJU'S is providing all of them a progressive exit package, including extended family health insurance benefits, outplacement services, fast-track full-and-final settlement on demand, and the provision of garden leave, where they can look for jobs while on BYJU'S payroll," said the spokesperson.

BYJU's further said all these employees will be offered an assured path to return to the company in case they cannot find a job in the next 12 months. Addressing the situation in Kerala, the spokesperson said the entire team in Thiruvananthapuram is offered an opportunity to relocate to Bengaluru. BYJU's currently has 3000 employees in Kerala and the operations at Thiruvananthapuram were discontinued to reduce redundancy.