Human Resource Community

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has asserted that a major round of layoffs at the microblogging platform were required due to the millions of dollars the company was losing daily. He clarified that all those losing their jobs were given three months of severance pay, “which is 50% more than legally required,” in an effort to soften the blow. “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted. A week after the $44 billion takeover by the billionaire business magnate, Twitter announced employment layoffs. With Musk in charge, a lot has happened, from letting go of executives to suggesting a new content moderation council. In the days following his takeover, rumours surfaced that he intended to fire at least half the Twitter employees in an effort to reduce expenses and save money. Musk first denied the accusations, but on Friday he reversed course and started firing staff members. Hours prior to the start of the first round of mass layoffs, Twitter declared in an internal memo to staff, “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday.” The cuts appear to be as severe as they were broad, hitting both Twitter’s marketing division and its trust and safety teams, which are responsible for content moderation. There are rumours that the company’s entire human rights team was fired. Following the layoffs, Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the tech giant, claiming that the firm violated federal and California law by performing mass layoffs without giving the requisite 60-day notice.

Microsoft’s CyberShikshaa programme will train 45,000 women in order to close the skills gap in the field of cyber security. Over the following three years, the initiative will give 45,000 women and underserved youth technological skills that will enable them to find employment in the cyber security field. Additionally, it will help to ensure diversity in the nation’s cybersecurity workforce. The Data Security Council of India (DSCI), Tata STRIVE, and the ICT Academy are partners in the CyberShikshaa programme. About 10,000 students will also have the opportunity to participate in internships or jobs under the initiative. According to data, there will be around 3.5 million cybersecurity positions available worldwide over the next three years. This is due to the fact that businesses, entrepreneurs, and governments all over the world feel the need to protect their data. In around six years, there will likely be a 32% increase in the number of cybersecurity positions in India. However, due to a 42 percent shortage in the talent pool, there won’t be enough qualified candidates for these positions. In the previous four years, the Cybershikshaa programme has been effective in training 1,100 women and assisting more than 800 of them in finding employment. The program’s current skill gap will be closed through future programme growth and an emphasis on specialised training for certain sectors.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has paved the way for the regularisation of contractual workers employed in various ministries throughout the state government by giving his approval to the execution of the “Rajasthan Contractual Hiring to Civil Post Rules, 2022.” Over 1.10 lakh contract workers will benefit from the action and receive social security as a result. When it comes to the hiring of contract workers, there will be more transparency if this Rule is put into effect. Reservation-related issues will also be considered during the hiring process. The central and state governments’ welfare and social security programmes have benefited greatly from the efforts of contract workers, but little has been done to safeguard their social security. While many committees were established to regularise the state government’s contract workers, their concerns were not finally settled. The CM had announced the establishment of a department-specific cadre of contractual employees in the state budget for 2021–2022, as well as a 20% raise in their pay in the budget for 2022–2023. According to a government announcement, the adoption of the Rule will help the approximately 41,423 contractual staff working in the education department, including shiksha karmis, para-teachers, gram panchayat assistants, and MG English medium teachers. A total of 1,18,326 Rajivika and MNREGA employees working for the rural development and panchayati raj departments will also benefit from it, as will 5,697 madrassa para-teachers employed by the minority welfare department and 44,833 contract workers employed by the medical and health departments as well as the medical education department.

In the years to come, Gujarat will employ a large number of people. Over the next five years, Tech Mahindra plans to employ at least 3,000 employees in the State. In accordance with its IT/IT-enabled services (ITeS) policy, the Indian company providing information technology services has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Gujarat government to this effect. With the help of this MoU, Tech Mahindra will be able to improve business operations and adapt to changing customer demands. The Gujarat government has signed approximately 15 agreements thus far under the IT/ITeS programme with a variety of Indian companies as well as numerous international organisations. If everything goes according to plan, there will be employment prospects in the State for around 26,750 people. Thousands of crores are likely to be invested by Lulu Group International in Gujarat to build Ahmedabad’s largest shopping mall, if media reports are to be believed. The mall being built by the UAE-based Lulu Group is anticipated to get started in the next year. The Group invested over Rs 2,000 crore in the construction of its mall in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, in July 2022 and anticipates that it would directly and indirectly employ more than 15,000 people. Gujarat is also anticipated to see the creation of similar prospects. Not only that, a semiconductor manufacturing facility will be built in Gujarat as a result of a joint venture between Vedanta, an Indian metal-mining company, and Foxconn, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company. By the time manufacturing begins at the factory in 2025, additional jobs will be available.

For employees of four public sector general insurance companies effective from August 2017, the Finance Ministry has announced an average 12% pay increase. A gazette notification dated October 14, 2022 stated, “This Scheme may be called the General Insurance (Rationalisation of Pay Scales and other Conditions of Service of Officers) Amendment Scheme, 2022,” It added that officials and workers will receive arrears for five years and that this wage revision would take effect on August 1, 2017, and that it would apply to people who had worked for these companies. It further stated that the subsequent revision, which is scheduled in August 2022, will take the form of variable pay based on both the employer’s and the employee’s performance. The imposition of remuneration linked to employee performance and corporate performance is not well received by the unions. “We are having strong reservations against the way the wage revision has been done after the wait of 64 months. Linking wages with performance seems to be illogical as we employees undertake so many government schemes,” General Insurance Employees’ All India Association (GIEAIA) general secretary Trilok Singh said. He added that state-owned insurance company employees, not those from the private sector, are what make all government programmes successful, thus there is no equal playing field for public sector insurance companies. Data from year to year show that the private sector has lagged, he continued. Singh emphasised that although unions are not opposed to reforms, they should be implemented with consideration for the public sector structure of these companies. The General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Act, which was announced by the government last year, will enable it to reduce its ownership of state-owned general insurers to below 51%. An official source estimated that the combined wage bill for New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance, and United India Insurance will be close to Rs 8,000 crore due to the 12% raise plus five years of arrears. Every five years, wages are revised for public sector banks and insurance firms. The following pay raise for insurance company employees is scheduled to begin in August 2022. Source: PTI

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) views moonlighting as unethical. The activity is against the company’s core beliefs and culture. So far, no staff member has been expelled for it. However, it has been made clear to staff members that the company will not accept moonlighting. According to Rajesh Gopinath, CEO of TCS, the Company’s stance on moonlighting is expressly specified in the employment contract. Moonlighting is reportedly considered a “ethical issue” that goes against TCS’s core values and culture by Milind Lakkad, the company’s chief human resources officer, according to a report by Mint. Earlier, organisations like Wipro, Infosys, and IBM have stated their displeasure of the practise. Wipro fired 300 employees who were found to be moonlighting and “violating integrity” in September, making it clear that it would not allow such conduct within the company. Working a second job while still employed by one company is known as moonlighting. Swiggy made news for its permissive approach on staff moonlighting as long as the relevant supervisors were aware of it and had given their approval. While there isn’t a legislation in India specifically prohibiting “moonlighting,” there are regulations that control or place limitations on dual employment to a certain extent. IT companies worry about moonlighting because they think it could reduce staff productivity and jeopardise the confidentiality of customer data.

Infosys has been charged with discrimination in hiring. The IT major reportedly didn’t hire women with children, those from India, or those who were 50 or older. Jill Prejean, a former vice president of talent acquisition at Infosys, has made these allegations. Prejean claims that since she resisted the Company’s demand to discriminate, she was subjected to retaliation and unfair treatment. She has since filed a lawsuit against Infosys, and this is not the first time that the US-based IT company has been accused of discrimination in recruiting. The company has been named in the case along with former senior vice president and consulting head Mark Livingston, as well as former partners Dan Albright and Jerry Kurtz. Prejean contends that by standing her ground against discrimination in the employment of senior executives, she unintentionally encouraged the animosity of the two former partners. She herself had joined Infosys in 2018, at the age of 59, and was horrified to learn that individuals were discriminated against throughout the selection process based on their age, gender, and domestic caregiving responsibilities. Additionally, she says that Kurtz and Albright among others were resistant to her attempts to reform this culture. Prejean’s case should be dismissed, according to the Company and the accused, because there is not enough evidence to support it.

There is a staffing shortage in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, India’s aviation regulator. Since it hasn’t employed anyone in more than eight years, the regulator now needs more staff since during that time, the nation’s aircraft fleet has expanded rapidly. According to a recent ET report, the DGCA employs over 1,300 people, over 600 of whom work in flight safety and are in charge of making sure that the country’s roughly 700 commercial aircraft are safe to operate. Contrarily, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a similar regulator for the US aviation industry, employs 45,000 people to care for close to 8,000 commercial aircraft. Things are beginning to look up for the nation’s airlines as the travel industry begins to recover from the pandemic. In order to meet the growing demand for traffic, it is therefore anticipated that the major airline firms will want to add roughly 100 aircraft each year. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will be used to hire qualified applicants for positions at the DGCA in the fields of flight safety, airworthiness, training, and standards, among other things. According to the report by ET, auditors from overseas, including the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and FAA, have alerted authorities to the fact that the DGCA urgently needs more workers and trained employees.

Eligible Indian Railways employees will receive their productivity-linked bonus (PLB), which is equal to 78 days’ pay, for the twelfth consecutive year. As the ceiling for calculating wage for PLB is set at Rs 7,000 per month, over 11 lakh non-gazetted employees of the Indian Railways can expect to receive around Rs 17,951 each. To maintain staff motivation, the railway unions, however, apparently expected a greater bonus amount this time. It is obvious that the employees contributed to the Indian Railways’ ability to load at least 1,418 million tonnes of freight in 2021–22. The unions believe that the workers should receive a higher bonus because of this. Before Dussehra this year, the workers anticipate receiving a larger bonus now that the festival season has arrived. The Indian Railways had more than two lakh open positions, according to the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen (NFIR), which merely increased the workload and work pressure for the existing staff. For taking on this extra labour, which helped the Railways generate more revenue, the employees should therefore be compensated. The Railway Board requested the 78-day pay, and the Centre is expected to approve it soon. About 1.156 million non-gazetted railway employees will profit from this PLB for the fiscal year 2021–2022; however, additional expenses of about Rs 2,000 crore will occur.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has sent a note to its employees requiring them to be in the workplace for a minimum of three days a week after attempting to entice them back with a social media campaign. That indicates that TCS is gradually moving towards its 25×25 model. The workforce has been instructed to adhere to the schedule that their team leads, supervisors, or managers have established for them in accordance with the demands of the various projects, even though a deadline for their return to work has not been established. The Company is facilitating the shift to a more hybrid model with improved internal processes. The mail advised the staff that because the company’s clients were already visiting the offices and senior staff had been working from them for some time, it was about time the workers followed suit. As a result, managers must create a roster and ensure compliance. The staff have been made fully aware that failing to follow the mandate or the roster will result in harsh consequences. According to TCS’ 25×25 model, which was unveiled during the pandemic when everyone was instructed to work from home, the goal for which was established at 2025, the company’s objective was to make sure that, at any given time, only 25% of employees were doing so. The Company, on the other hand, is gradually implementing the model while exerting far more control over it.