PropertyGuru’s structural organisational changes will mean that 79 roles, or 5% of the company’s total workforce, will be made redundant.
“This decision was made after careful and objective identification of the roles for PropertyGuru’s next phase of growth,” says PropertyGuru’s CEO and managing director Hari V. Krishnan.
The move comes amid the recent spate of layoffs at firms like Lazada and tech names like Amazon, Google and TikTok.
On Feb 27, Krishnan announced that the company will be making “structural organisational changes” in a bid to “future-proof” the business.
“Volatile market conditions and changing customer needs require us to adapt our strategy so that we can continue to grow sustainably. It’s essential that we periodically reassess our progress and take proactive steps to future-proof our business,” he says.
Some of the changes include closing businesses that have been operationally non-scalable and not profitable such as two of the company’s nine branches in Vietnam related to their Marketplace business. FastKey, a marketplace feature that connects agents to developers, will also be shut down.
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In addition, the company will also consolidate technology delivery to “drive economies of scale” and to streamline its regional technology resources to improve collaboration.
Finally, the company will redesign roles across marketing, product and enterprise sales in a bid to strengthen its customer support.
Following the “challenging” decision to let go of 79 members of its staff, Krishnan announced that each impacted member will receive a severance of one month for each year of service, capped at 12 months or country statutory severance pay, whichever is higher. Affected staff will also receive a goodwill payment of their one-month base salary as well as an eligible annual performance bonus in 2023 for non-sales employees. Sales employees who were let go will receive their commissions for February and March where applicable.
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Impacted employees will still be eligible for their medical insurance for three additional months from their last date of employment as well as career transition assistance. They will get to keep their work laptops as well. Employees who were on employment visas will receive three months of extended leave without pay based on local manpower laws. They will also get repatriation support for them and their dependents and financial support for early exits of residential tenancy.
“To each departing Guru, the leadership team and I extend our heartfelt gratitude, and we wish you good luck. Your contributions have been important to our story, and we value the relationships we built over the years,” says Krishnan.
