IT firms help staff look out for jobs
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 30 December 2008, 15:53 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: IT biggies in India are no more just laying off their employees, and instead, firms such Yahoo, Cisco and Genpact are helping their employees connect with potential employers. The companies adopted this measure to cope with the economic recession more effectively by downsizing the staff strength in order to lower the salary costs, reported The Economic Times. "When a global software product development firm wanted to downsize, they asked me to get in touch with another firm to see if they would like to absorb the employees," said GC Jayaprakash, principal consultant at Stanton Chase. "Outplacement is gaining ground in India but usually it is done in an informal manner and firms do not want to publicize this too much," he added. Indeed, People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) certification makes it mandatory for firms to offer outplacement help. "As a process, it has been there for a long time but very few organizations have used it in India and in most cases, it has been the MNCs. Indian organizations generally shy away it," said Amitabh Das, CEO of Vati Consulting. During past three months, firms across the segments of IT, business process outsourcing (BPO) and FMCG have offered such help to their staff. HUL, Motorola, Sapient, Yahoo, Intel, Genpact, Cisco and Fidelity are among several firms in India who have offered outplacement help to their affected employees. Shiv Agrawal, CEO of ABC Consultants, is a big supporter of this system. "Retrenched employees bear no negative feelings and perceive the organization as a good employer. It sends a positive message to the remaining workforce thereby giving fillip to morale, loyalty, productivity and retention," he says. More over, even after asking their employees to leave because of the recession, these companies are hoping that they will be able to attract talent when the situation improves.

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