Human Resource Community

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.

The Indian BPO/BPM service provider ICCS plans to hire 7,000 people over the course of the next 12 months. Every month, the company’s 6,600+ professionals oversee 15 million client interactions from eight delivery centres. The company is looking for expertise in a variety of fields, such as customer service, operations, outbound and inbound support, market research, human resources, finance, marketing, and so on. Since its founding in 2005, ICCS has expanded by 25% annually. It generated Rs 115 crore in revenue in 2021–2022, and by the end of current financial year, it aims to generate Rs 175 crore. Expanding geographically, entering new industry verticals, and advancing technologically are all possibilities. “Alongside actively recruiting new talent, we onboard 500 plus callers every month across multiple geographies so that we are able to serve our diverse customer base better,” says Divij Singhal, Founder and CEO of ICCS. For its Hyderabad center—its second base, which already had a 500-strong workforce at the time—the company had, in April 2022, announced plans to add a thousand people by the end of current year. Government, fintech, DTH, e-commerce, banking, FMCG, and other industries are included in the company’s diverse portfolio. Back-office services, chat and email, finance and edtech, BFSI, insurance, accounting, tech support, and outsourcing of the hiring process are just a few of its solutions. Customer onboarding, retention, collections, omnichannel customer care, and automation of chat and email field assistance are further areas of expertise.

Rishad Premji, Chairman of Wipro, revealed on September 21 that 300 of its employees had been let go when the company found they were simultaneously employed by a competitor. The Wipro Chairman insisted that he still stands by his recent assertion that moonlighting constitutes a serious violation of integrity. Premji said at the AIMA’s (All India Management Association) National Management Convention, “The reality is that there are people today working for Wipro and working directly for one of our competitors and we have actually discovered 300 people in the last few months who are doing exactly that.” When asked about the actions taken against individuals who were found to be working simultaneously for the company and for rivals, Premji said that their employment had been terminated for a “act of integrity violation.” Moonlighting is the term for secretly doing a second job. He said that as part of transparency, people might talk openly and honestly about things like being in a band or “working on a project over the weekend.” The organisation and the individual can jointly decide whether or not it works for them, he added, adding that it is an open conversation. Additionally, Premji said, “There is no space for someone to work for Wipro and competitor XYZ and they would feel exactly the same if they were to discover the same situation.” “That is what I meant…so I do stand by what I said… I do think it is violation of integrity if you are moonlighting in that shape and form,” he said. Anand Mahindra CP Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra, recently tweeted that it is important to adapt to the times and added, “I welcome disruption in the ways we work.” “No two timing – no moonlighting,” Infosys stated in a stern message to employees this week. Dual employment is not permitted in accordance with the Employee Handbook and Code of Conduct, according to Infosys’ internal communication titled “no double lives.” The email from Infosys had stated that “Any violation of these clauses will lead to disciplinary action which could even lead to termination of employment.” Source: PTI

Google has been working to reduce costs in an effort to guarantee operational effectiveness. As a result, the tech giant chose to concentrate on AI-first solutions and cancel half of the projects that its staff at Area 120 were working on. Google’s R&D division, Area 120, gives staff members the chance to work full-time on their innovative concepts. The staff has succeeded in developing a number of fascinating features and novelties. In order to move the team’s attention to AI-related initiatives, 50% of its projects have now been cancelled in addition to the team’s size reduction. This indicates that there are currently only seven projects being worked on by the division, as opposed to the 14 projects it was previously working on. The employees whose work was on the cancelled projects at Area 120 have been told of the decision to scale back, and it is said that they have been instructed to hunt for other projects to work on at Google by January 2023. According to reports in the media, they might be forced to leave if they don’t comply. Many popular products, including GameSnacks, Tables, AdLingo, Touring Bird, Byteboard, Tangi, and Shoploop, were created by Area 120. Projects that were cancelled included ones that dealt with initiatives in the areas of shopping, climate, analytics for augmented and virtual reality, financial accounting (for Google Sheets), and analytics. This is not particularly surprising given the recent emphasis on productivity by the Google CEO. He had previously stated that the Company might need to reorganise teams and even let some employees go.

Amazon wants to spend more than $5,000 on driver education reimbursement. Additionally, it intends to help them financially with a 401(k)-investment plan. Not only that, the e-commerce company will spend around $450 million on wage increases and other perks. Amazon made the decision to provide its DSP drivers in the US with a 401(k) scheme after learning that the majority of them consider retirement savings to be a crucial advantage. Matching the contributions of the drivers will aid the fleet owners. Amazon will provide roughly $60 million in the first year to make this possible so that the DSPs can afford the cost of matching their drivers’ payments. Now, drivers who are a part of Amazon’s DSP network can also take advantage of educational incentives so they can finish high school or enrol in other courses. In the past four years, the company has already made roughly $7 billion in its Delivery Service Partners (DSP) network. With a $10,000 minimum commitment, it has been enticing resourceful people to build their own fleet of drivers. The e-commerce behemoth will hire more people as the holiday shopping season approaches and is already concentrating on simplifying its logistics network. Similar bonuses were recently added by Amazon for anyone working in its warehouses. Following the exposure of the working conditions at its warehouses a year ago, Amazon has been subjected to criticism on social media.

As part of its budget-cutting initiative, HCL Tech has let go of over 300 employees. Although there has been no official or public notification regarding these layoffs, Money Control revealed that those working on Microsoft projects in Guatemala, the Philippines, and India have been most severely impacted. A severance payment, the specifics of which are still unknown, will be provided to those who are requested to leave. The final day of work for those who were laid off is anticipated to be September 30. According to media reports, the layoffs were revealed at a town hall. However, the company insists that its tech and services divisions have been recording growth and are doing so quickly. According to information obtained by the media from people with direct knowledge of the situation, Microsoft had expressed concerns about the work’s quality. The employees who were let go worked on initiatives that tracked, selected, and edited news content for Microsoft’s MSN news platform from India, Europe, the US, and other regions of the world. The method of keeping track of global news apparently recently became automated. In terms of sales and market capitalization, the Indian tech multinational had surpassed Wipro a few weeks prior to move up to third place in the nation. HCL has a market valuation of about 2.5 lakh crore, compared to Rs 2.2 lakh crore for Wipro. According to reports, the company signed and received 17 new projects in Q4 and got two new customers in the $100 million customer range.

There has been a significant discussion in the industry after Rashid Premji tweeted that moonlighting is similar to cheating. Some corporate leaders supported moonlighting, while others opposed it. Employees at Infosys are currently being cautioned about moonlighting in an internal email. They risk losing their jobs at Infosys if they do. According to TOI, Infosys has informed its employees that it would not tolerate dual employment because it violates the company’s code of conduct and the rules outlined in the employee handbook. On September 12, a mail with the subject line “No two timing – No moonlighting” was sent to the employees. The email continues by stating that no employee is permitted to engage in any second employment outside of regular working hours without the organization’s permission. While Infosys and Wipro are explicitly opposed to moonlighting, Swiggy, a food aggregator platform, has implemented a progressive moonlight policy that permits its staff to work on outside projects during the weekends and outside of their regular working hours. In fact, Swiggy is the first Indian employer to permit moonlighting, with the stipulation that projects undertaken by employees must not clash with Swiggy’s operations and must receive management clearance on an internal basis. It is obvious that Swiggy does not want to control what its employees do outside of working and duty hours.