Pink slip woes: 7 IT companies in India to ask at least 56,000 employees to leave, say reports

India’s Information Technology (IT) companies are in the middle of their biggest retrenchment drive. After Wipro fired over 600 staff members in March, it has now been reported that seven of the biggest companies have planned to ask at least 56,000 engineers to leave this year. That roughly amounts to 8,000 employees per company.

As reported in Mint, the companies include both Indian and multinational firms with a large footprint in India.

The report adds that the number is at least twice the employees laid off by the companies last year, reflecting their under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies and dealing with the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies.

“The seven companies—Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, US-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and DXC Technology Co., and France-based Cap Gemini SA—and which together employ 1.24 million people, plan to let go of 4.5% of their workforce in 2017,” the report added.

Each of these seven companies has already put a higher number of employees on notice by awarding them the lowest ratings. Cognizant has placed more than 15,000 employees in the lowest category (bucket IV), and Infosys has placed more than 3,000 senior managers in the category of employees needing improvement.

The report also stated that the seven companies were still in “denial mode” and attributed the planned exits to a “marginal” increase in the number of poor performers on account of a “more rigorous” performance evaluation process.

In the past, between 1% and 1.5% of a large Indian IT firm’s employees would be asked to leave every year on account of poor performance. The number was 3% for foreign companies with large Indian operations. This year, the range is likely to be 2-6% across Indian and foreign companies.

Wipro Technologies (Wipro Ltd)

Infosys Technologies Limited