Oyo Rooms Fires 30% Of Employees In The US; Slashes Jobs In Sales, Support As 350+ Staff Terminated

Bad news keeps coming in from OYO Rooms this year!

After firing 15-20% of its work force in India and 5% in China earlier this month, OYO Hotels and Homes in its restructuring, trimming and redundancy exercise has offered pink slips to its more than one-third of the total U.S. employees last week.

The OYO is maintaining more of a balance approach rather than growth approach in the year 2020 after experiencing a major loss in 2019.

U.S.A ’s OYO Staff The Most Impacted In The OYO’s New Bizz Model?

Reportedly, OYO in the U.S.A. fired around 360 employees from various sectors. Job positions in business development and sales, roles categories were the most impacted.

In the email shared with employees by OYO COO Abhinav Sinha, states that the company hopes to emphasise on profitability and sustainable growth, which means that “some roles will become redundant”.

An OYO spokesperson said,“The difficult decisions about headcount would enable the company to hire and invest in other areas that are key to our ability to serve property owners and guests well for the long term.”

OYO is rolling benefits for the laid off staff like consulting outplacement agencies, an average of 3.2 months of gross pay, personal insurance for almost 90 days and parental insurance of 4.5 months.

U.S.A. Staff Questioning OYO’s Hiring Practices?

A business development manager told Skift who was fired last week said that, “They over-hire and overwhelm the market, and waste millions of dollars.” He also added saying that promises were made about individual sales staff being responsible for certain territories, but found out once on-the-job that more than a half dozen employees had been assigned to the same turf.

According to the laid-off business development manager, OYO does not weaken the hotel properties like some chains do, and offers online travel agency distribution at around a 13 percent flat commission rate, which can be much lower than the norm. Also OYO’s technological improvement is considerable.

Is The Impacted Staff in China and India Outrageous?

OYO fired around 12000 employees from China and 10,000 from India citing non-performance.

In addition to the employees being laid off in China, the hotel owners and accusing and protesting against OYO for violating contractual agreements. 

China lay-off may pose a threat to OYO with China being the largest market for the hospitality firm.

Some OYO employees in India were hired in the last couple of months promising them a bright future but were chopped off from the company in January 2020. The employees were handed pre-drafted resignation letters and were asked to sign on them, following which experience letter was provided immediately. Request of notice period was turned down.

The benefits have been provided in the form of ex-gratia package to the laid-off staff; but is it enough? 

OYO’s Reputation at Stake!

OYO has seen growth as well as losses in the last couple of years.

Customer complaints about bad experiences along with grievances about poor or unfair treatment from several of the over 20,000 hotel owners in its chain and now the lay-offs is putting OYO’s reputation at stake!