New Delhi: Tiktok’s global interim head Vanessa Pappas and vice president for global business solutions Blake Chandlee in a joint email to employees have communicated the decision of the company to reduce its team size and the decision will impact all employees in India.
According to sources at ByteDance, the company is retrenching its workforce in India and will continue to operate with skeletal staff in select department such as legal, administrative, human resource, accounts etc, to facilitate the settlements and engagement with the government.
Pappas and Tiktok’s global general counsel Erich Andersen briefed employees in a town hall on Wednesday morning about the lay-off plan and offered them three-month salary as well as additional month remuneration in proportion to the number of years they have worked for the company.
The executives expressed uncertainty on the company’s comeback to India but expressed hope to do so in times to come.
”While we don’t know when we will make a comeback in India, we are confident in our resilience, and desire to do so in times to come,” Pappa and Chandlee said in the joint email.
When contacted, a Tiktok spokesperson said the company has worked steadfastly to comply with the Government of India order issued on June 29, 2020 and continually strives to make its apps comply with local laws and regulations.
”It is therefore disappointing that in the ensuing seven months, despite our efforts we have not been given a clear direction on how and when our apps could be reinstated. It is deeply regretful that after supporting our over 2,000 employees in India for more than half a year, we have no choice but to scale back the size of our workforce.
”We look forward to receiving the opportunity to relaunch TikTok and support the hundreds of millions of users, artists, story-tellers, educators and performers in India,” the spokesperson said.
