Human Resource Community

The United Arab Emirates is expanding the Golden Visa programme in order to attract more workers. This includes scientists, researchers, and experienced people. The list of employees also includes eminent scholars and clerics, elite specialists in industry and the fourth industrial revolution, and experts in the fields of health and education. A long-term residence visa called the UAE Golden Visa allows foreigners with special talents to live, work, or study in the UAE. These advantages include a long-term renewable residence visa good for five or ten years, the benefit of not needing a sponsor, the opportunity to stay outside the UAE for longer than the standard period of six months while still maintaining their residence visa’s validity, the capacity to sponsor an infinite number of people, and the ability to sponsor their family members, including wives and children regardless of their ages. Workers who wish to apply for this UAE golden visa must possess an employment agreement that has been approved in the UAE and documentary evidence demonstrating that they hold a level 1 or level 2 occupation according to the MOHRE’s (Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratization) system of occupational classification. For jobs needing this employment certificate, a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent qualification must be attested. It is also necessary to submit a wage certificate from the employer together with a bank statement from the last six months showing a monthly salary of at least AED 30,000.

The NATO Building Integrity (NATO BI) initiative published the new Human Resource Management (HRM) toolkit for the public sector on October 24, 2022. The toolkit, created by the Norwegian Center for Integrity in the Defence Sector (CIDS), provides an interactive manual for fostering integrity in the public sector. It includes systematic planning manuals for human resources staff, employee questionnaires, and practical managerial competency assessments. The development of transparent, accountable, and democratic institutions depends on HRM. NATO BI aims to assist allies and partner nations on advancing good governance and putting these values into practise in the defence and related service sectors. According to NATO, effective HR management systems are essential to a well-functioning defence and security sector because they create leadership cultures that can be relied upon and trusted. Integrity building should be incorporated into every aspect of any institution, including job design, recruitment, and selection processes, as well as organisational culture. The newly created toolkit tries to create a link between organisational principles and practises in various circumstances. The HRM toolkit can now be used in compliance with NATO BI principles thanks to the publication of the “Glossary of Human Resource Management in the Public Sector.” Its goal is to support public sector employees and managers, as well as members of civil society organisations and the media, in creating institutional resilience. The toolkit will be made available in Arabic, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Spanish in addition to the two official languages of NATO (English and French).

Through an exchange filing on December 21, 2022, Tech Mahindra announced that it would issue employee stock options for shares valued Rs 7,58,450. A total of 1,51,690 equity shares worth Rs 5 each would be distributed across two ESOP 2014 and ESOP 2018 schemes. Following this new issue, 973,778,993 shares totaling Rs 4,868,894,665 have been issued. Earlier this month, the company announced its collaboration with Airtel to enable a private 5G network at Mahindra’s Chakan facility. On December 12, 2022, Tech Mahindra granted stock options worth more than 6 lakh rupees to its employees. On Wednesday, Tech Mahindra shares were up 0.91 percent at Rs 1,027.20. Tech Mahindra is part of the Mahindra Group. The company is based in Pune, while Mumbai serves as its registered office. It is a global provider of consulting and IT services based in India. More than 158,000 people work at Tech Mahindra in 90 different countries.

According to media reports, the government employees under the 7th Pay Commission will get a hike in their dearness allowance (DA) by March 2023. Additionally, if these reports are to be believed, the centre also intends to increase the dearness relief (DR) for pensioners. Generally, the DA and DR are revised twice a year between January and July. So, as the new year is around the corner, the central government employees are anticipated to get a 3 to 5 per cent hike in their DA for March 2023. The media reports further suggest that the central government employees will also receive the long pending 18-month DA arrears soon. In the previous DA increment in September 2022, about 48 lakh central government employees and 68 lakh pensioners benefitted. The Centre increased DA by 4% in September 2022, bringing the total increase to 38%. Prior to this, the 7th Pay Commission raised the 34 percent DA received by central government employees in March 2022 by 3%. However, the decision to increase the DA will be determined based on the inflation rate and the 7th CPC’s recommendations. There is a potential that the DA will be hiked further if the inflation rate is high at the time.

Organizations with a strong ethics culture can motivate their employees and people around them to speak honestly and with integrity. TATA Group-owned Air India has chosen to develop an ethics governance structure in order to boost the airline’s ethics culture. The airline has also announced the formation of committees at the regional and apex levels. The apex committee would be led by Campbell Wilson, managing director and CEO of Air India. Air India’s chief ethics counsellor (CEC), chief human resource officer (CHRO), chief financial officer (CFO), and chief operations officer (COO) are also members of the committee. The apex committee would be in charge of formalising any ethics or related guidelines, as well as approving policies, forms, and procedures pertaining to ethics guidelines. According to the internal document, regional ethics committees can escalate issues to the apex committee if they arise. One of the committee’s major responsibilities will be to create a “positive ethics culture” through continual engagement, AI engagement, and ethics training. This mission will also be supported by local ethics counsellors (LECs) and regional ethics champions. Gurjot Malhi has been appointed as the new CEC. Previously, he was the CEC of Vistara, where he attempted to establish a system along the same lines. Malhi has been at Tata Steel for almost a decade. He has served as an advisor to the managing director of Tata Steel, as well as an advisor to Tata Sons in Bombay House and the CEO of Vistara.

Vedantu, the edtech unicorn, has laid off 385 employees, bringing the total number of layoffs this year to almost 1,000. Senior executives will also face pay cuts. Vedantu laid off 624 staff in May of this year, followed by another 100 three months later. The Company is trying to rationalise while focusing on rapid growth. As part of this cost-cutting and rationalisation effort, the Company’s leadership, including the founders, will take a 50% pay cut. Vedantu recently paid $40 million for Deeksha. The latter is a platform established in Karnataka that assists students in preparing for board and competitive exams. This was a first step toward going hybrid. In Muzaffarpur, the company had lately constructed a ‘hybrid’ coaching centre. Given the global economic uncertainty, Vedantu has merely done what other companies are doing today. Fear of a recession and inflationary conditions are affecting businesses worldwide, causing them to cut costs. As the need for online coaching has decreased following the pandemic and schools have reopened, most edtech platforms have established physical coaching centres across the country. Vedantu became a unicorn in September 2021, after raising $100 million in a Series E funding round led by ABC World Asia. Tiger Global, Coatue Management, GGV Capital, and WestBridge were among the other investors. Vedantu was founded in 2011 by Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, and Anand Prakash, alumni of IIT-Delhi.

Amazon, the technology and ecommerce giant, was reported to be planning to lay off up to 10,000 employees in the coming months in mid-November. However, according to Computerworld, the company is considering laying off 20,000 people across all businesses and divisions. Employees at distribution centres, corporate roles, and technological functions will be affected by this layoff. According to reports, this will be Amazon’s largest layoff in its history. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, announced in a statement to the media that the company is considering layoffs but did not provide specific numbers. People working in people experience business physical stores would be impacted, according to him. This layoff is expected to affect all firms, with no specific location indicated. Employees in higher salary bands will also be laid off. Amazon has seven bands, and all are expected to be impacted. It is also said that employees who are laid off will receive a mail confirmation and severance pay 24 hours before their termination. According to the report, one of the reasons for this layoff is that the company, which was employing in large numbers during the pandemic, overhired. Amazon is now sacking employees as a cost-cutting measure in the guise of streamlining the business. Managers in the Company have been requested to investigate performance issues in their teams as a result of the layoffs. Amazon teams are considering relocating the laid-off employees to different roles within the Amazon group of businesses or offering them separation packages. The severance package will include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and outside job placement assistance. Amazon’s ecommerce business has been decreasing. In reality, Amazon Web Services’ year-on-year income has also decreased this year. The quarter ending September had revenue increase of 27%, which was lower than the preceding two quarters, which saw revenue growth of 33% and 36.5 percent, respectively.

Samsung plans to hire 1000+ engineers for its research and development (R&D) institutes across India in order to boost its focus on innovation and new-age technology. In 2023, the new hires will join the Korean tech company’s R&D centres in Bangalore, Delhi, and Noida, as well as the Samsung Semiconductor India Research in Bengaluru. Engineers will be hired from a variety of fields, including computer science and related fields (AI/ML/computer vision/VLSI, for instance), information technology, electronics, instrumentation, embedded systems, and communication networks. Engineers will be chosen from disciplines such as mathematics, computing, and software engineering. All new hires will work on cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, image processing, IoT, connectivity, cloud, Big Data, business intelligence, and others. “Strengthening their focus on innovation and cutting-edge technology, Samsung’s R&D centres aim to hire new talent from India’s top engineering institutes who will work on breakthrough innovations, technologies, products and designs, including India-centric innovations, that enrich people’s lives. This will further our vision of Powering Digital India” said Sameer Wadhawan, head of human resources at Samsung India. Samsung is aiming to hire roughly 200 engineers from leading Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) such as Madras, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bombay, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Guwahati, and Varanasi (BHU) for the current season. Over 400 pre-placement offers (PPOs) have already been extended to students at IITs and other top institutions.

Hirect, a chat-based direct-hiring platform for startups, has laid off 40% of its workforce as part of organisational restructuring and strategic changes to its business model. That means the startup is laying off over 200 staff. Hirect is a platform that enables recruiters to employ candidates through the app’s audio and video calling features. It focuses on high-growth startups and small companies, finding the best talent without the use of consultants. The Company, which mostly serves the startup sector, appears to be suffering from a slowdown in new hires. According to the company’s LinkedIn profile, there are approximately 472 employees. According to Mint, the Bengaluru and San Francisco-based company employed over 600 people at its peak. Three of the impacted employees were reportedly requested to leave in mid-October, but they have yet to receive their release letters. According to these individuals, management did not meet its commitments and did not provide severance pay or job-search aid. Furthermore, prior to the layoff, the employees were asked to relocate to the Bengaluru office. Meanwhile, management has stated that its first objective is to settle employee dues. Hirect aggressively marketed in Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Pune last year, at a time when hiring, particularly for tech-related positions, was a hot topic in the start-up world. To expand its reach, the chat-based direct-hiring platform partnered with major brands and multinational companies in July. Hirect initially catered primarily to startups, but the company later redesigned its website (www.hirect.in) in an entirely new format to provide a better user experience.

Ramesh Chauhan, a veteran industrialist, told news agency PTI on Thursday that Bisleri International is in discussions with a number of players, including Tata Consumer Products Limited (TCPL), about selling its packaged water business. His remarks followed a story in the Economic Times that TPCL was planning to buy Bisleri for an astounding Rs 7,000 crore. Ramesh Chauhan, the chairman of Bisleri, however, denied that the agreement with Tata Group had reached a conclusion and said that he was still looking for a buyer for his packaged water company. The group is in talks with a number of potential buyers, he added. The chairman of Bisleri International, Chauhan, responded, “It’s not correct… We are still discussing” when questioned about the rumours that he had decided to sell his firm to the Tata Group company. In the meanwhile, TCPL added that it will issue the proper announcements in accordance with the rules as and when such a need arrives. The Tata Group company also stated in a regulatory filing that it is in talks with Bisleri International for the growth and expansion of the business of the company. Since many years, Ramesh Chauchan has led Bisleri, a market leader in the packaged water segment. As part of the segment, a number of businesses compete, including Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC)’s Rail Neer, Bailley from Parle Agro, PepsiCo’s Aquafina, and Coca-Cola India through its brand Kinley. However, all of these businesses fall short of Bisleri. The company is also present in the fizzy beverage market with brands like PinaColada, Spicy, Limonata, and Fonzo. In addition, Chauhan created a number of super brands, including ThumsUp, Gold Spot, Maaza, and Limca, which the Coca-Cola Company acquired in 1993 after reentering the Indian market. In the meantime, TCPL, which was created by joining Tata Chemicals’ consumer products business with Tata Global Beverages, aims to become a dominant player in the FMCG sector by stepping outside of its comfort zone and expanding into new markets. In its most recent annual report, TCPL stated, “with strong product innovation, investment in strengthening our brands and strategic acquisitions, we are well on track in our journey to become a leading FMCG company”.