Bengaluru CEO Helps 67 Of 70 Laid-Off Employees Find New Jobs Through Leads & Referrals

Harsh Pokharna, CEO and founder of OkCredit, is receiving praise on social media for setting a rare example of finding new jobs for his terminated employees. 

OkCredit is a free app helping small business owners and their customers to record and manage credit/payment transactions digitally.

Recently, the Bengaluru-based bcompany laid off 70 employees due to budget constraints.

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What actually happened? 

In a LinkedIn post, Pokharna disclosed that hiring too fast and burning too much capital led to the difficult decision.

“It was our mistake, and we owned it,” he wrote, admitting that layoffs were one of the hardest challenges he faced as a founder.

However, the OkCredit founder took a humane approach to ensure employees got an opportunity somewhere.

The CEO wrote: “We spoke to each of the 70 people, personally.

Told them what went wrong, why this decision had to be made, and how we’ll support them.

We gave them 3 months’ notice.

Helped with referrals, intros, job leads - anything that could help.

67 got placed before the notice period ended.

For the 3 who didn’t, we gave 2 months’ extra salary.”

He shared that 120,000 people were laid off this year. Though many of these employees didn’t even get a call.

“Some found out through a blocked email. Some were just removed from Slack in the middle of the day. That’s inhuman,” the  OkCredit boss admitted. 

“Yes, layoffs happen. But how you handle them says everything about your culture,” he said wisely.

Even if firing employees is a difficult move, a founder should do it appropriately, he advised.

“If you call someone “family” while hiring them, treat them like family when letting them go too,” Harsh Pokharna concluded.

Many professionals commended Pokharna’s approach.

One user wrote, “Real power lies in owning up. True quality of a leader.”

Another individual remarked, “Mistakes happen, but employees shouldn’t bear the brunt. You did the right thing.”

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