Better.com founder and CEO Vishal Garg, who made headlines after laying off more than 900 employees on a Zoom call in 2021, has said that he's "worked really, really hard" to be a kinder boss.
Garg had reportedly later admitted to his remaining employees that he had "blundered the execution" of the layoffs, Insider reported.
At the time, he had also accused about 250 terminated workers of stealing from the online mortgage company by over-reporting their working hours, Fortune reported.
Speaking to TechCrunch in an interview, Vishal Garg said that he underwent a "lot of leadership training" to rebuild trust with his staff after that infamous Zoom call.
"So I've worked really, really hard to change the way that I show up to the team every day, and to be more empathetic and to treat them with the same level of kindness that I showed our customers," he told the publication. "I think I was very mission-centric, customer-centric, and really, really focused on what it took to drive growth."
But the founder and CEO said he later realised that he needed his employees to "feel delight" if he wanted Better.com "customers to be delighted."
When asked about possible job cuts in the future, Garg told Tech Crunch, "I can’t honestly tell you whether or not we have any layoffs in the future. I think a lot of that depends on the mortgage market. But we think that we’re appropriately staffed and actually we’re adding headcount in a variety of areas to drive growth."
The company has just under 1,000 employees now, he added.
Read more: Anand Mahindra slams Better.com Vishal Garg over layoffs: 'What type of culture...'
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