Coronavirus-related business closures and stay-at-home orders have had a crushing effect on hourly workers. And now, it's also impacting companies that manage their schedules.
When I Work, a Minneapolis-based tech company that offers a workforce scheduling platform, said today that it has laid off 55 full-time employees, eight part-time employees and furloughed one full-time employee. The cuts affect around 35% of the company's workforce.
CEO Chad Halvorson said in a statement that many of the 60,000 businesses When I Work serves have suspended, canceled or downgraded their accounts.
"We expect that some of this is temporary, but it is impossible to predict how much," Halvorson said.
When I Work's laid-off employees received a severance package that consisted of paid notice, severance pay, benefit premiums for several months, equipment, stock option exceptions and other career support resources. The company's executives have also taken a pay cut, effective immediately.
"We are feeling the impact of this crisis first-hand in partnership with our customers," Halvorson said. "Our team is doing everything they can to help our customers react, survive and recover so that then they reopen we can help them get back up and running smoothly."
Prior to the layoffs, When I Work had been growing consistently over the last 10 years. When Minne Inno spoke with Halvorson last summer, he said the company had more than 1.2 million hourly employees utilizing its scheduling platform in 100,000 workplaces across the U.S. every month.
The company also had around 160 employees as its headquarters in the Ford Center in Minneapolis and signed a new lease to hold onto the space for 10 years.
"When I Work has grown nonstop since it was founded in 2010 and will row again when many hourly workplaces reopen," Halvorson said. "Better days are ahead and we look forward to being reunited with many of our team members and customers in the future."
He added that if any organization in the Twin Cities is hiring in sales, success, support, marketing, product or engineering, they should reach out to the When I Work human resources team to get connected with recently-released employees.
