Some Better.com employees learned of layoffs via payroll

Some Better.com employees affected in Tuesday’s mass layoff learned of their firing via their payroll accounts, ahead of the internal announcement about them, the company said.

The lender cut over a third of its 9,300 workers and a “small number” of those affected found out early because of the snafu, it said in a statement. Employees discovered the mistake through their Workday accounts at midnight in their respective time zones and shared messages about the error on Slack, the Daily Beast and TechCrunch reported.

“This was certainly not the form of notification that we intended and stemmed from an effort to ensure that impacted employees received severance payments as quickly as possible,” the company said, not elaborating on the number of employees affected.

Better’s firing of more than 3,000 employees comes in response to rising interest rates reducing refinance activity and cutting into the company’s volume, said Kevin Ryan, chief financial officer and interim president, in an email. The cuts are the second mass layoff in the past three months, following CEO Vishal Garg’s infamous December Zoom call in which 900 staffers were laid off.

The lender has approximately 5,200 workers in the U.S. and 4,100 in India, according to a February Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Better did not say how many workers in either country were being cut.

“Personal, one-to-one calls will continue today in the U.S. and through tomorrow in India to provide every person affected by layoffs with information about this announcement and the significant financial, healthcare and transition support Better will be providing,” the company said.