Oracle India prefers hour-based payment

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 07 January 2009, 17:32 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: IT employees may have to cope with strategies being adopted by the companies to counter the economic downturn. Now, it's regarding their salary. Oracle, world's second largest software products company is transforming its payment mode by making the salary of its 20,000-odd employees in India according to the productive hours they spend in the company, reported Business Standard. Company sources said that if an employee is a billable resource for 15 days a month, he will be paid in full for that period while for the rest of the period, he is paid a nominal amount. The new development has resulted in salary cuts, ranging between 10 and 50 percent across the board. The company has also asked all non-billable employees to get themselves engaged in internal projects, failing, which they can explore opportunities outside the company. However, it is not clear that the company is asking the non-billable employees to work for outside companies as contract employees while still on Oracle's rolls, or to use their non-productive hours to make money for themselves. Oracle introduced the new plan for the employees in Oracle Financial Services software and reportedly implemented across all its centers in India. However, the company has not given any written material to employees regarding the new plan, while the team leaders and project managers in different centers have been informed about the decision orally. "They are telling us that while many companies are laying off employees, Oracle does not want to take such extreme steps. They are saying that once things start improving, we will be back to all the usual compensation and allowances," said a senior employee of Oracle India on condition of anonymity. Oracle's second quarter's net income has fallen half a percent to $1.27 billion and the company's sales were up 5.5 percent to $5.6 billion, lower than analyst estimates. Revenues from new software licences were also down to three percent to $1.6 billion. According to the sources, after the acquisition of i-Flex there were plans to lay off all employees of that company, but the decision scrapped following the intervention of Oracle's management. Sources further added that the company has cancelled employee travel costs and withdrawn free snacks and food. Though the company is saying that they don't stop recruitments in India, freshers who were given offer letters for annual packages of Rs 2.4 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh earlier are now being asked to consider packages of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh.