Homecare firm enacts layoffs at S.F. headquarters
Honor, a provider of inhome care and related technology, has laid off 35 of its San Francisco headquarters staff, The Chronicle has learned.
Jessica Gilmartin, Honor’s chief marketing officer, said the layoffs were across departments including general administrative and human resources positions. Honor plans to continue to increase its caregiver workforce, she added.
“We recently eliminated a small number of jobs — less than 10% of our total noncaregiver workforce,” Gilmartin wrote in an email. “These targeted reductions were made in the normal course of business operations and we don’t have any further comment as to why we’ve made these small adjustments to our workforce.”
Honor, founded in 2014, began offering services in Contra Costa County in 2015 and now provides nonmedical caregivers in the Bay Area and more than 800 cities and towns across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Ohio and Michigan. It initially hired its own homecare workers, shifting them in 2016 from independent contractors to regular employees with benefits and stock options. That change averted the controversy some businesses now face over whether their workers are misclassified as contractors.
In 2017, Honor began offering software and services to independently owned homecare agencies — its former rivals. Honor provides those agencies technology for caregiver scheduling, training and performance tracking, as well as a phonesupport team. Gilmartin said Honor directly employs thousands of those caregivers, transferring them as employees from outside agencies to Honor’s payroll. It continues to hire caregivers directly as well.
According to CrunchBase, the company has received $115 million in total funding since its founding.
The news website Axios previously reported that Japanese conglomerate SoftBank walked away in November from a commitment to invest $150 million in Honor after agreeing to provide the funding last year.
Gilmartin declined to comment on the report, but said the company is “fully funded.” The company is backed by Naspers Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital. CEO Seth Sternberg previously started Meebo, a messaging app, and worked at Google.
“We recently eliminated ... less than 10% of our total noncaregiver workforce.”
Jessica Gilmartin, Honor CMO