More Big Hitters Turn to Cutting Hours and Wages to Save Money

April 22, 2020
Share this Post: 

More news on what companies are doing to cut costs during the pandemic, this time in Spain. One of the largest property portals in the country, Idealista, is temporarily cutting hours and salaries to stave off its hemorrhaging revenue. 

Filing a Temporary Employment Regulation File (ERTE), Idealista’s workforce of 538 employees will see 25% of their salary covered from April 15 until September 15 of this year. Furthermore, the Spanish government has implemented a job-safety guarantee barring companies from laying off their employees for six months after the end of the ERTE period

Regardless, the ERTE showcases the crisis the Spanish property market is seeing while lockdowns are in order. 

Idealista isn’t the only company in Europe that is turning to cutting hours and wages instead of laying off its staff. Ringier Axel Springer has done the same with its Slovakian workforce. The firm is cutting wages by 20% for two and a half months, which started on April 15

Not all companies have been able to save their workforce in the same way. In the US, Matterport, though it seemed to be doing quite well now that portals are turning to virtual tours and, therefore, turning to Matterport for the tools necessary to create these tours, has quietly laid off some of its staff

WeWork, the tumultuous office space provider was forced towards layoffs, but not until May

And Opendoor, another US portal, has laid off some 600 of its staff with the CEO donating his year's salary to cover employee relief efforts.

Still, many companies are keeping their employees, offering instead, discounts to agents and utilizing billing relief instead of cutting hours, wages, and staff. The pandemic has forced the hands of companies across the globe to come up with new ways to save money, continue business, and keep their employees. Though companies are always looking to innovate, the crisis has sped up the process and the ones who are successful will be the ones to see to the other end of the pandemic. 

April 22, 2020
Victoria has been writing about property portals and marketplace sites for Online Marketplaces for over 3 years. She is also our resident artist and is responsible for all of the infographic content on the site.

Subscribe to our mailing list to get the famous, free Friday newsletter!

News and analysis to help build better online marketplace businesses, in your inbox, every Friday

Related News

Nils K
Ringier's Nils Körber on ArtificiaI Intelligence, Training the Machine, and Talking about Problems

"What would you do with one million interns?" The award for the best question at the PropTech and Portal Watch...

Read More
Untitled Design 13
As OnTheMarket Hits 15,000 Advertisers, Zoopla Fights Back with Big Agency Deal

The British property portal Zoopla has announced a new long-term listings deal with Dexters, one of London's top agencies with...

Read More
Untitled Design 12
LeBonCoin Suffers Data Leak and Boliga Comes Under Cyber Attack on Same Weekend

LeBonCoin, the leading French horizontal marketplace owned by Adevinta, has acknowledged that some of its users' personal information was exposed...

Read More
Number 2S Challenging Hero Image 2
Analysis: Can Zoopla, Realtor.com and Domain See Off Challengers and Close the Gap to Market Leaders?

Well-funded challenger portals have been generating a lot of headlines in the industry recently. CoStar has been explicit about its...

Read More

Editor's Pick