Human Resource Community

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.

The Tata Steel Jamshedpur employees will get a 20% annual bonus credited to their accounts by September 15, 2022. The management and the workers’ union have agreed to this in a Memorandum of Settlement. This bonus calculation formula will remain in effect until 2024. The 20 per cent yearly bonus this year is larger than the 16 per cent that was granted the prior financial year. About Rs 47 crore more has been added to the bonus. Additionally, it is the first time that a bonus payment of more than Rs 300 crore (Rs 317.51 crore) has been made. A goodwill bonus of Rs 20,000 per employee will also be given, as requested by the union, in recognition of the hard work put in by all employees, even during the pandemic, and the outstanding results of the company in FY 2021–2022. Each employee will therefore receive a minimum of Rs 61,448 (including the goodwill bonus) and a maximum of Rs 4,78,411 (including the goodwill bonus)! A total of 23,710 people across the Company’s facilities will benefit, including around 12,213 employees in Jamshedpur. V. Narendran, CEO and managing director of Tata Steel, and Sanjeev Choudhary, president of the Tata Workers’ Union, both signed the memorandum. Other attendees included Atrayee Sanyal, vice president (HRM), Shailesh Kumar Singh, deputy president, Satish Kumar Singh, general secretary, Tata Workers’ Union, Rajesh Prasad, deputy labour commissioner, Jamshedpur, and conciliation officer, Govt. of Jharkhand.

Ms. Tang Yu, an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot, has been named the rotating CEO of Fujian NetDragon Websoft, a flagship subsidiary of NetDragon Websoft, a technology company in China that develops mobile applications and also runs a multiplayer online gaming platform in China. In this role, Tang Yu, an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot, will improve task quality, process efficiency, and execution speed. Tang Yu will also serve as a real-time data hub, analytical tool support, and platform for making more sensible decisions about everyday operations and risk management. What’s more intriguing is that the company anticipates Tang Yu will play a significant role in identifying talent and maintaining a fair and effective environment for workers, both of which require for a human touch. This action by NetDragon Websoft demonstrates the company’s desire and conviction that AI can revolutionise business management and raise operational effectiveness to a new level. “We believe AI is the future of corporate management, and our appointment of Ms. Tang Yu represents our commitment to truly embrace the use of AI to transform the way we operate our business, and ultimately drive our future strategic growth. Looking forward, we will continue to expand on our algorithms behind Tang Yu to build an open, interactive and highly transparent management model as we gradually transform to a metaverse-based working community, which will enable us to attract a much broader base of talents worldwide and put us in a position to achieve bigger goals,” says Dejian Liu, Chairman, NetDragon. The hiring of Tang Yu marks a crucial step in the company’s transformation into a “Metaverse organisation” and emphasises its “AI + management” strategy.

In Punjab, around 25,000 contract workers might expect getting regularised. Out of them, the Education Department employs a sizable 8,000 contract workers, while the Health Department employs roughly 6,000. A proposal that will regularise the services of ad hoc, contractual, daily wage, and temporary teachers with 10 years of experience has received approval from the Punjab Cabinet. Teachers make up the majority of individuals undergoing regularisation, with support workers making up the remainder. Personnel from Punjab’s departments of power and transportation are among the other beneficiaries. The regularisation will put additional financial strain on the state government, with costs expected to reach more than Rs 400 crore. The regularised employees will get basic pay for their first three years of employment in accordance with an old one-time policy. Each department will implement a unique regularisation policy for its contract employees and establish a distinct cadre just for them. A three-member cabinet subcommittee headed by the finance minister of Punjab deliberated and created the policy. The state cabinet, presided over by the chief minister, gave its approval to their report. The committee has recommended that the government implement a plan to regularise employees. The contract workers in Group C and D for the Punjab government will become permanent, according to an announcement made by Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Punjab, in March of this year. In the Group C and D categories, about 35,000 temporary positions had been turned permanent. The Punjab Cabinet had suggested offering 10,000 public posts in the police department and 15,000 in other government departments in early March. More youth from the State should be able to obtain government positions through a fair and transparent process based on merit, it was anticipated that regularisation would enable.

As part of the “Inclusion To Action” initiative, Microsoft and EnAble have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) under which they would work together to create about one lakh job opportunities for persons with disabilities (PwDs). This collaboration will assist in bringing together different stakeholders from different sectors to transform career prospects for PwDs and make this enormous untapped talent pool significantly productive. The partnership between Microsoft and EnAble India is the result of the former’s five-year global commitment to close the global gap in PwDs’ access to technology, employment, and education. EnAble India, a non-profit organisation, has been working to help PwDs become economically independent as well as to help them maintain their dignity and command respect for more than 20 years. With Microsoft joining its mission, more than 100 Indian organisations from a variety of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, retail, and technology, will now work together to provide PwDs with tech skilling, mentorship, internship, and job initiatives. PwD candidates will be able to improve their grasp of digital accessibility, which is becoming more and more crucial in the current hybrid work environment, due to the technical skilling programmes. Increased PwD representation will inevitably lead to inclusive product development, which will benefit people with disabilities who use technology. PwDs will also have access to training programmes on modern office tools, which will increase their efficiency.