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K. Bharat Kumar
Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

Chennai, New Delhi Aug. 31 Indian IT services companies, whose clients see slowing IT spends, are targeting the biggest part of their expenses – manpower – to keep costs in check. The bottom few, ranging from 0.5 per cent to 10 per cent of most IT companies’ workforce, are now finding it hard to retain their jobs.

Top IT companies, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL Technologies and Cognizant together employ about 4.5 lakh people. Typically, 60 per cent of employees in these are fully employed, excluding those on the bench and those under training. If all these companies, on average, weed out the bottom 1.5 per cent of their ‘fully employed’ people, and by inference, between 4,000-5,000 people would have been made to walk out of these IT majors, last year itself.

Recruitment firm Ma Foi Management Consultants CEO, Mr Balaji E, feels that the back-of-the-envelope calculation may not be far off the mark, though it is difficult to say exactly how many people lost their jobs since no one confesses to having been fired, in their resume. “In good times, CEOs rarely talk of targeting the bottom 1-5 per cent in their companies. You didn’t hear about these things in 2006 or 2007,” he says.

Agrees Ms Nirupama V.G., Managing Director of recruitment consultant Ad Astra. “Employee measurement on the scale of productivity has become key to retaining competitiveness,” she says. Industry observers point out that while last year non-performers could get away with a nominal 4-5 per cent hike, this year companies are either asking them to leave or are ignoring salary hikes.

Infosys feels that employees too are bucking up. Mr T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director-HR, Infosys said that employees were becoming far more disciplined. “We do not weed out employees, but we do a rating entailing 2-2.5 per cent (of 60,000 active employee base – Infosys’ current headcount is 94,400) of low performers. Of this, 50-70 per cent leave and the balance are put on a performance improvement plan and monitored over one quarter,” he said.

According to Mr Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice-President & Head, Global HR, TCS, involuntary attrition has been around 0.5 per cent of workforce – at a headcount above 1,10,000, the number comes to about 550.

Satyam Computer Services’ Global Head, HR, Mr S.V. Krishnan said its involuntary attrition, excluding those who failed background checks, is between 1.5 and 2 per cent. With headcount nudging 50,000, this yields roughly 750. Wirpo, despite recruiting new people, saw a net drop of 725 in its global IT services headcount between the March and June quarters this year.

Among mid-sized firms, Mphasis’s CEO Mr Jeya Kumar says that every year, the bottom 10 per cent of its employees are identified for poor performance. “Not all leave immediately. But they are free to look for another job within, or outside, the company.”

Polaris Software Labs let go 1.5 per cent of employees for year ending March 2008, according to Mr Somasajeevan T. K., Executive Vice President & Global Head - Talent & Change. That makes it about 150 people on headcount of about 10,000 people.

More Stories on : Software | Human Resources

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