CEOs claim recession does not affect job cuts
By Christo Jacob   |   Thursday, 21 August 2008, 00:04 IST
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Bangalore: As retrenchment and lay off news hit the newspapers each day after the U.S. recession has set in, the techies in the India's most glamorous industry - IT, there is a fair amount of panic and disturbance among the employees. Will I be the next one in the line is the question in the minds of every techie. However, most of the companies deny those reports and say that the recession has not affected them. Some companies do agree on slash down but only as a part of its routine quality control issues. On verifying some of the media reports on Patni Computers slashing employees, one of the spokesperson said, "All this news about layoffs at Patni Computers is a rumor. There have been no layoffs due to recession or otherwise. Recession has had no effect as such. We have just given everyone performance tests and this is a part of our HR policy. Those who performed were given appraisal and moved to next level and those who did not perform were stagnated." On commenting on the reports - 'Webex rejigging top management' Kiran Datar, Managing Director, Webex said, "Its a hoax. Though there was internally mapping being done, as a part of Cisco's acquisition, there is no change in the roles. On the contrary, the company is in a hiring spree. It is planning to add 15 to 20 percent of its current sales team with 50 employees." As per the sources in the company, the employees have received mails that say no panic message. According to study conducted across 150 leading corporates in India by Hewitt Associates, companies are looking to balance the pressures of inflation and lower HR budgets by increasing productivity (57 percent) and redeployment of manpower (31 percent). Meanwhile 30 percent of them stated that they have increased performance linkages to counter fixed pay increases. Only 20 percent of the organizations surveyed mentioned a hiring freeze or slowdown. However, another survey by latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas also points out that layoff announcements rose sharply in July. Transportation and financial-services firms led the way, while CEO John Challenger said that job-cut announcements have spread to a wider majority of industries in recent months.Year-to-date, the number of jobs included in layoff announcements has risen 33 percent above year-earlier levels. The July 2008 total was over twice as high as in July 2007, and up 26 percent from June 2008. In some companies it is true. According to our sources in Wipro the company is identifying bottom ten percent ( low performers) in every project. "Though the process is a usual practice, this time the process was vigorous and cautious," he said. In another note, one of the spokesperson of the semiconductor company on condition of anonymity said that their company has slashed down 90 employees globally. "This is due to the slump in the memory market," he added. "Though many companies are hit by recession, the employees have to realize the reality. The real good guys are still in demand. If they are updating their skills, they do not have to worry about job cuts," says Prakash H N, HR Manager, Xora. So start thinking now, how critical are you to the project / company.

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