Human Resource Community

While Wipro is eager to welcome the freshers it had chosen, the latter are feeling very disappointed and discouraged as their pay has been reduced by half. The IT major has reduced salaries for freshers who are waiting to join by 50%. As a result, people who were previously promised a package worth Rs 6.5 lakhs year are now expected to accept a salary of Rs 3.5 lakhs a year. Wipro has been asked to reconsider its decision since it is unfair to the freshers and goes against the principles of transparency and fairness, according to the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES). According to the Senate, it is unethical to punish the freshers for the Company’s financial troubles. “The decision to cut the salaries of the employees without prior consultation and negotiation is not only unjust but also goes against the principles of fairness and transparency. It is unacceptable that the burden of the company’s financial troubles is being placed solely on the shoulders of the employees,” Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of NITES, said. Nonetheless, the company believes that by halving salaries, it is giving new hires a chance to develop their abilities and learn new things, and that this choice was prompted by the uncertain economic downturn present around the world. Those who are awaiting onboarding have been informed that there are currently project engineer roles available with a salary of roughly Rs 3.5 lakhs per year. The freshers who have just completed the company’s Velocity programme for graduates’ training and development have been greatly surprised by the pay cut. NITES has urged management to reconsider its decision and hold meaningful discussions with the union to arrive to a mutually beneficial solution.

Leading packaged snack company Bikano has kept up its hiring spree as it plans to grow its workforce by 10-15% over the next two to three years. The company’s overall headcount increased by 10% in 2022, according to a statement, as a result of expanded operations and a larger footprint, particularly in Hyderabad and the NorthEast. Currently, Bikano employs roughly 2,200 people. Both lateral hiring and recruiting of new hires would be included in the upcoming employment procedure. According to the statement, a combination of hiring would be used in the upcoming years to accommodate the seasonal surge in production and demand. Increasing production at numerous sites in Delhi-NCR and the south Indian market, particularly Hyderabad, has become a primary goal for the company in an effort to increase its market share. This escalation is expected to spur extensive employment across all locations and plants. Also, many trainees across functional areas, including sales and production, are anticipated to be onboarded for the Hyderabad plant in addition to the hiring of experienced staff. “We are indeed happy to have come out relatively unscathed through the pandemic years,” said Manish Aggarwal, Director of Bikano. “Unlike other mainstream businesses, which were cutting down on their manpower, we were doing the exact opposite. It is this level of increased hiring which has been fueling our aggressive expansion plans,” he said. “In the New Year, as the inflationary trends as well as the broader slowdown headwinds ease further, we will expand our product portfolio with new and innovative offerings as well as SKUs. This means that we will only step up our hiring and recruitment drive further looking to increase our total workforce by as much as 10-15 per cent in the coming two or three years,” added Aggarwal. Kush Aggarwal, Head of Marketing, Bikano, said, “As a professional company with a proper corporate setup, we understand that HR policies and practices are responsible for a company’s growth. Bearing that in mind, we have a structured and standardised HR system in place. We give a chance to youngsters through campus visits. We also invest heavily in the training of our employees. We function as a family, keeping in mind the interests of both individual employees and the organisation.” Bikano is one of the leading packaged snack brands in the nation and was founded in 1950. What started as a small Chandni Chowk snack shop called “Bikaner Namkeen Bhandar” has grown into a huge sweet and savoury food brand. According to the statement, it is currently present in over 35 countries, including the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.

Elon Musk has already closed two of its three offices in India after already firing 90% of its 200 employees there. The employees have been asked to work remotely. Musk also shut the Twitter office in Mumbai in addition to Delhi. The Bengaluru office is still in operation. The majority of the employees in this office are engineers who work at the Twitter US headquarters. Musk seems to have, at least temporarily, diverted his attention away from the Indian market. The Company’s cost-cutting efforts include closing the two offices in India. Since the start of the layoffs, Twitter has struggled with content regulation and general functionality. The CEO had previously suggested that it might take him a full year to bring about operational stability and financial stability for the social media company. According to reports, Twitter has been settling lawsuits brought by a number of service providers and contractors after failing to pay the rent for its headquarters in San Francisco and London. It was also reported a few weeks ago in Singapore when landlords led staff out of the office building. According to media reports, Twitter had to collect money for rent in some locations by selling some of its office assets. Musk has never obscured the fact that his company’s revenues have been dropping, and he has even made indications about a potential bankruptcy.

After long-time CEO, Susan Wojcicki stepped down on February 16, YouTube will now have Neal Mohan as its CEO. YouTube’s parent company, Google, began its journey in Wojcicki’s garage. Her departure comes at a time when there is a lot of enthusiasm and worry about the potential impact of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which is now integrated with competitor Microsoft’s Bing Search, on how people might search for information online in the future. TikTok and Instagram Reels are two other short-video platforms that compete fiercely with YouTube. “It’s been amazing to work with you over the years. You’ve built YouTube into an extraordinary home for creators and viewers. I’m excited to continue this awesome and important mission. Looking forward to what lies ahead,” Mohan wrote on Twitter, addressing Wojcicki. Thank you, @SusanWojcicki. It's been amazing to work with you over the years. You've built YouTube into an extraordinary home for creators and viewers. I'm excited to continue this awesome and important mission. Looking forward to what lies ahead… https://t.co/Rg5jXv1NGb — Neal Mohan (@nealmohan) February 16, 2023 Neal Mohan, a Stanford graduate who joined Google in 2008, oversees YouTube’s Shorts and Music departments as its chief product officer. Also, he has experience with Microsoft and sits on the boards of 23andMe, a genomics and biotechnology company and the personal styling company, Stitch Fix. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent US think tank. Mohan attended Stanford University for four years to earn a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. In the early 2000s, he enrolled in the university’s Graduate School of Business to pursue an MBA. He spent many years working for the internet advertising company DoubleClick. He became part of the tech giant after it was acquired by Google in 2007, rising to the position of senior vice president of Display and Video Ads. He became part of the tech giant after it was acquired by Google in 2007, rising to the position of senior vice president of Display and Video Ads. Indian-origin Mohan is one of several CEOs leading other major global tech giants, including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai.

Zomato has stated that, as a result of poor performance, company has stopped offering its services in 225 smaller cities. The food delivery tech company also experienced losses of Rs 346.6 crore during its Q3 financial report, mostly as a result of the decline in its food delivery business. The company reportedly noted, “The unexpected slowdown in demand has affected the growth of food delivery profits,” in its Q3 report. “Nevertheless, we believe that we are well positioned to achieve our profitability target,” it added.  Although it is unclear which cities have been impacted by this decision, the company is attempting to increase its profitability. In the three months from October to December, Zomato’s revenue increased by 75% to Rs 1948 crore, according to the latest report. But losses also rose five-fold. The report also states that only 0.3% of the total order value came from the 225 small cities. As a strategy to grow its business, Zomato just restarted its Gold Membership subscription. According to reports, the company’s membership programme already has more than 900,000 subscribers. The company is confident that the return of this service will improve user engagement and app usage. Additionally, the CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal, announced on LinkedIn that various positions, including chief of staff to the CEO, growth manager, generalist, software development engineer, and product owner, are open for hiring. However, he emphasised a strict requirement for these positions, stressing that there will be no work-life balance and that employees will need to be prepared to work day in and day out for the company, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

According to Boeing, employment reductions in the finance and human resources divisions of the aerospace corporation are planned for 2023, with a loss of almost 2,000 jobs. According to a statement released by Boeing, “We expect about 2,000 reductions primarily in Finance and HR through a combination of attrition and layoffs.” “While no one has been notified of job loss, we will continue to share information transparently to allow people to plan,” it stated. Boeing stated that it anticipates “significant growth” in its overall workforce this year. According to the statement, “We grew Boeing’s workforce by 15,000 last year and plan to hire another 10,000 employees this year with a focus on engineering and manufacturing.” According to the company, Boeing had 156,000 employees overall as of December 31, 2022. The other roles will be cut, according to Mike Friedman, a senior director of communications, as the company makes reductions in finance and support services for human resources.

Disney, a major player in the entertainment industry, is firing 7,000 employees as part of a cost-cutting strategy to tackle the challenges the company is facing. During the company’s earnings call for the December quarter, CEO Bob Iger made the announcement. Despite having to make a difficult choice, Iger praised the talent and commitment of Disney employees all across the world. Through a strategic reorganisation of its operations, Disney hopes to save about $3 billion in the next years on the content side, excluding sports. The three major business segments created by the restructuring are Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products. The company aims to save $5.5 billion in costs across the entire organisation, resulting in a more efficient, integrated, and simplified approach to operations. Disney+, the company’s streaming service, reported a loss of about $1.5 billion during the most recent quarter. Disney anticipates that the streaming service will make a profit by the end of the current fiscal year (2024). Disney+ and other streaming services are part of the direct-to-consumer sector, which witnessed a 13% growth in revenue to $5.3 billion with an operating loss of about $1.1 billion. For Disney to address its challenges and run its companies more successfully in a difficult economic environment, layoffs and reorganisation are a necessary step. Despite the difficult decision, the company is still dedicated to providing its customers with top-notch entertainment and experiences.

According to an official blog, Zoom, a communications technology company, would be asking about 15% of its employees to leave. Particularly during the pandemic when the majority of businesses required their employees to work from home, the video communications company had gained widespread popularity as a conference tool. In order to meet the growing demand for the video-conferencing tool at the time, Zoom had also hired a large number of personnel. Zoom had a slowdown in growth as a result of the post-pandemic decline in demand for video services. The Company was forced to take what Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, refers to as a “difficult measure” as a result. The affected employees will receive 16 weeks of pay as severance, a year of healthcare coverage, and a bonus when they are let go. Zoom is currently working to reduce expenses and get ready for the impending recession. In addition to giving up his corporate bonus for 2023, Yuan is taking a 98% pay cut for this year. In the post, Yuan states that other executive leaders will also be forgoing their corporate bonus for 2023 and taking a 20% pay cut to their basic salaries.

The tech giant Google recently let go 12,000 workers, prompting protests from employees on both US coasts. The employees organised the protests to make people aware of the working conditions for subcontracted workers and to show support for their sacked co-workers. There were two protests: one outside Google’s corporate headquarters in New York City and one at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The New York protest, which was conducted outside a Google store on Ninth Avenue shortly after parent company Alphabet Inc. released its fourth-quarter results and revealed a profit of $13.6 billion, drew around 50 employees. The Alphabet Workers Union, a labour group that includes both Google employees and subcontractors, organised the protests. Although the AWU lacks the ability to engage in collective bargaining, software engineer Alberta Devor, an AWU member who has worked at Google for more than three years, claimed that the protests demonstrated how some issues affect all workers, regardless of their position or status. Subcontractors protested what they saw as unfair working conditions at the California rally, including poverty wages and a lack of benefits. These workers, who carry out duties including evaluating content to train the company’s AI algorithms and screening YouTube clips and advertisements for offensive material, claim that their pay and benefits are significantly below Google’s own minimal standards and benefits for direct contract workers.

At a time when other edtech firms are significantly cutting back on staff, Physics Wallah, the unicorn edtech company, is hiring. Over the following two months, the company plans to add around 2,500 more employees to its workforce. It seeks faculty members, teachers, consultants, business analysts, data analysts, operations managers, and batch managers. In accordance with its growth plans and objectives, the company is apparently hiring for a variety of roles and responsibilities. The company is looking for individuals who share PW’s vision of offering “affordable and quality education for all” and who can be a student’s lifelong learning partner. In an effort to broaden its upskilling offerings, the Company recently acquired iNeuron, an edtech company with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, in a deal worth Rs 250 crore. With a workforce of 6,500 employees, including more than 2000 teachers and subject experts, PW dodged downsizing like many other edtech companies. To strengthen its supply chain operations, the edtech platform has partnered with Unicommerce to deliver study materials. PW, which caters students of class 6 to 12, also provides materials for students hoping to take competitive exams like the NEET and JEE. Thousands of students throughout India rely on its content and study materials.