Microsoft Occupies Top Spot as India’s Most Attractive Employer Brand

Randstad Employer Brand Research 2020

* Employees seek work-life balance, attractive salary & benefits and job security

* 69% of the survey respondents indicated that they stayed with their employer in the past year and 81% agree that non-monetary benefits are equally important when choosing an employer

Microsoft India, the technology giant emerged as India’s most ‘attractive employer brand’, reveals the findings of Randstad Employer Brand Research (REBR) 2020 - the most comprehensive, independent and in-depth employer brand research in the world. Microsoft India scored high on financial health, strong reputation and utilization of the latest technologies – the top 3 EVP drivers for the organization, as per the survey. Samsung India emerged as the runner up, followed by Amazon India.

The annual employer brand research, based on perceptions of the general audience (students, employed and unemployed workforce) has been conducted by Randstad, the global leader in the HR services industry. REBR has been providing valuable insights to help employers shape their employer brand for over 20 successful years globally and it is the 10th edition in India this year.

The Randstad Employer Brand Research, covering 75% of the global economy with 33 participating countries and more than 1,85,000 respondents worldwide, clearly revealed that in 2020, work-life balance (43%) emerges as the top EVP driver for the Indian workforce while choosing an employer, followed by attractive salary and employee benefits (41%) and job security (40%). These are also the areas where there is a significant gap between what employees want and what they think employers offer in India.

This year, it is interesting to note that there are no gender differences in the top two EVP drivers. Both male and female respondents attributed equal importance to work-life balance (43%) and attractive salary and employee benefits (41%) as key factors while choosing an employer. However, more men (40%) considered job security as a key factor while choosing an employer than women (39%).

A higher percentage of male respondents (36%) also accorded more importance to career progression opportunities compared to their female (33%) counterparts.

Presenting the REBR 2020 survey insights, Paul Dupuis, MD & CEO Randstad India said, “This is the 10th edition of REBR in India and 20th edition globally. For the last 10 years, our research has been consistently adding value to India’s HR community, by bringing out remarkable insights on workforce sentiments and allowing them to evaluate their employer brand. Employer branding is an evolving journey based on newer and deeper insights that unravel with time, so organizations must make this a strategic business agenda”.

“I believe that effective employer branding is a function of an organization’s purpose. If the company has clear visibility of its true north, a great culture and can define and articulate why they exist, while making real connections, the process of creating a ‘meaningful employer brand’ that resonates with their audience will become easier. This process has become increasingly important since the onset of COVID19 – when the job market is undergoing a paradigm shift and the need for organizations to transform their employer branding proposition to make it more ‘humane’ in the new world of work becomes even more critical”, he added.

Top 10 most attractive employer brands in India for 2020:

1.         Microsoft

2.         Samsung

3.         Amazon

4.         Infosys Technologies

5.         Mercedes-Benz

6.         Sony

7.         IBM

8.         Dell Technologies Ltd

9.         ITC Group

10.       Tata Consultancy Services

Other key findings from the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2020

What do potential employees want by generational profile:

38% of Gen Z’s (18-24 years) are looking for good training opportunities from their employer, while 34% of the Millennials (25-34 years) are attracted to forward-thinking and tech-savvy organizations and deem the use of latest technologies as a very important attribute. 46% of Gen X’s (35-54 years) find good work-life balance a very important pull-factor towards an employer, whereas 32% of the Boomers (55-64 years) find a convenient location as the key factor.

Switchers, Stayers and Intenders In Focus:

69% of the survey respondents mentioned that they stayed with their employer in the past year and 43% mentioned that they plan to change their employer within the next year.  Work-life balance emerged as the top factor for stayers (45%) while 71% of switchers and intenders mentioned that they changed their employer or plan to do so shortly because of a lower salary compared to elsewhere. 35% of the survey respondents who left their previous employer received a salary increase between 1% and 10%. 81% of the respondents find non-monetary benefits like company phone/car, childcare services and support, flexible working hours etc. important.

The top 5 most attractive benefits for the Indian workforce are healthcare (85%), flexible working hours (84%), the possibility of working from home (83%), internal training and subsidized higher education like short-term courses, certifications etc. (80%) and group life insurance (79%).

Top 4 sectors in India by awareness and attractiveness:

The survey also highlights that the Indian workforce prefers to work for companies operating in sectors like IT, ITeS & Telecom, Automotive, followed by FMCG, Retail & E-commerce and BFSI.

Netmagic Launches SaaS Based Application Performance Monitoring Services Based on the AppDynamics Platform

Netmagic  (An NTT Company), and a leading managed hosting, security and multi-cloud hybrid IT solution provider in India, today announced its partnership with AppDynamics, a Cisco company, to provide Application Performance Monitoring (APM) as a service to enterprises in India to ensure deep visibility into their customers’ critical applications and end user experience.

This service enables businesses to deliver flawless digital experiences consistently by connecting end-user experience and application performance to business outcomes. APMaaS is intuitive to configure and deploy, automatically discovers business transaction, consumes little production overhead, monitors every line of code, and dynamically baselines performance to proactively identify and resolve application performance issues before they impact customers and the business.

Contemporary businesses rely heavily on digital technology to deliver a superior customer experience. Technology today includes a complex fabric of multi-cloud, IOT, distributed services, microservices, containers, APIs and much more that need to work in harmony to ensure that the application performance as experienced by the end user is of high quality.

Speaking about this, Nitin Mishra, Senior Executive Vice President, and Chief Product Officer, Netmagic (An NTT Company) said, “We are extremely pleased to partner with AppDynamics to offer Application Performance Monitoring Service (APMaaS) empowering businesses to navigate this turbulent pandemic period and emerge stronger and more scalable. With the business transaction-centric management of most complex and distributed applications, the APM service will bring value and enhance customer experience by providing clear visibility on the underlying components of the application. Apart from narrowing down to the source of the problem in the entire application flow, it will also provide deep user insights and analytics that will help the customer deliver significantly improved end user experience”

Adding further, Abhilash Purushothaman, Managing Director, India & SAARC, AppDynamics, said, “Our partnership and joint solution offering with Netmagic is a significant milestone for the AppDynamics India business. In India, adoption of online application-led services has sky-rocketed across all industry verticals in recent years. Now with the recent pandemic and increased reliance on remote working, our customers have shared that managing digital user experience in real time is no longer nice to have but a necessity. This strategic partnership will help us scale and deliver APM as a service across all business and industry segments.” 

The modules of this tool that will help in delivering the APM services include Application Performance Management – Core, Performance Management – Microservices Application Performance Management – SAP, Synthetic Transactions Monitoring, Browser Real User Monitoring, Mobile Real User Monitoring, Database Visibility, Infrastructure Visibility, and Business Analytics.

The benefits of the service that would add value to customers’ applications management are –

* Uptime and availability of the applications.

* Slowness in response in terms of time and database can be identified using this service.

* Application performance monitoring for end-users who use browsers and mobiles, tablets etc. to access the applications.

The modules will be wrapped under different packages and offered to customers. The APM solution is based on the package and can be scaled up depending on business requirements. This service can be delivered as a standalone offering or as an enhancement integrated with Netmagic’s Infra Manage Services.

About Netmagic (An NTT Company)

Netmagic, an NTT Company, is India’s leading Managed Hosting and Multi-Cloud Hybrid IT solution provider serving more than 2000 enterprises globally. Headquartered in Mumbai, Netmagic also delivers Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) services to various enterprise customers globally across Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific region. The Company was the first in India to launch services – Cloud Computing, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and Software-Defined Storage. Netmagic has been recognized with 8 awards at the CIO Choice 2020, and 2 awards at the Datacenter Dynamics India 2019.

Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance launches Child’s Future Assured Plan

Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance (ABSLI), the life insurance subsidiary of Aditya Birla Capital Limited (ABCL), has launched a one-of-its-kind insurance plan called ABSLI Child’s Future Assured Plan. It aims at assured returns combined with protection, to financially secure a child’s future milestones. 

This child plan offers guaranteed returns and is a non-linked non-participating life insurance plan. ABSLI Child’s Future Assured Plan enables you to plan for child’s two significant milestones - education & marriage by providing the required cash flow to help you meet your goals for your child’s future. It has an in-built Waiver of Premium element that ensures that the policy continues in case anything unfortunate happens to the life insured. This plan offers the flexibility to choose periodic pay-outs of 3, 6 or 9 years to plan for child’s education and a lumpsum at the desired milestone, to plan for marriage. The customer can also avail the option to receive both, guaranteed regular income to plan for their child’s high school, graduation, and post-graduation expenses and guaranteed lump sum as corpus for marriage related expenses.

The plan can be tailor-made and customized basis an individual’s requirement by opting for solutions such as flexible benefit options, premium paying term, death benefit, and additional riders. It offers the choice to enhance risk cover up to 200% of Sum Assured. This plans also enhances the benefits by providing Loyalty Additions of 20% of each pay-out for policies, where all the premiums have been paid through the premium paying term (PPT).

Policyholder can avail assured pay-outs and high sum assured rebate with maximum guaranteed benefits, to plan for his/her child’s education, marriage, or both together by opting from any of the following options:

* Education Milestone: Option to receive guaranteed annual pay-outs for 3/6/9 years as per the need for child’s education preferably on child’s age from 15 to 21 years.

* Marriage Milestone: Option to receive a guaranteed lump sum on maturity for a child’s marriage fund preferably on child’s age from 24 to 32 years.

* Education and Marriage Milestones: Option to receive both guaranteed income and a lump sum for a child’s education & marriage.

Death Benefit: In the event of unfortunate death of Life insured, any premiums due thereafter will be waived off and nominee will continue to receive scheduled Assured pay-outs. The nominee can also avail the option to receive a lump sum of future Assured pay-outs at a discounted rate. 

Commenting on the launch, Kamlesh Rao, MD & CEO, Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance said, “Building and sustaining wealth corpus for child’s important milestones has always been the topmost priority for every parent. During such unprecedented times, protection for your child’s dreams and goals becomes a matter of utmost importance, hence the need for creating a tailored solution, which provides guaranteed returns for addressing your child’s future needs. We believe that ABSLI Child’s Future Assured Plan is a distinctive product with assured pay-outs, which will cater to suit financial ensure peace of mind”. 

Key Benefits

• Comprehensive planning for your child’s future: Plan for your child’s education, marriage or both life stage needs together under one product

• Guaranteed Benefits: All benefits are fully guaranteed 

• Enhanced value for loyal customer: Get 20% extra on each benefit as & when due as loyalty addition

• Flexibility to plan according to your desired milestone: Pick a PPT & Assured Benefit Payment Term  as per your desired milestone

• Enhanced risk coverage: Choice of enhancing risk cover up to 200% of Sum Assured to provide financial security to your loved ones in case of any exigency. Additionally, enhance coverage through riders.

• Policy Continuance Benefit: We shall pay the monies at your desired milestones and the policy shall continue as is even in  your absence

• High Sum Assured Rebate available

Plan at a glance

Entry Age                 Minimum: 18 Years

                                  Maximum: 65 Years (50 years if Enhanced insurance cover is chosen)

Age at Maturity          75 years

Minimum Premium     Rs. 30,000 p.a.

                                    Max No Limit

Jobless Americans climb to 551,000 in September 2009

The count of Americans seeking unemployment benefits for the first time climbed unexpectedly by 17,000 to 551,000 for the week ended September 26, indicating that labour market remains strained despite easing economic conditions.

The figures come a day after official data showed that the US economy contracted less than expected at 0.7 per cent i the June quarter.

According to the US Labor Department, the number of initial claims for jobless benefits rose 17,000 to 551,000 for the week ended September 26.

In the previous week, the figure stood at 534,000. As per the data, the four-week moving average was 548,000.

However, the count of those receiving unemployment benefits dropped as much as 70,000 to 6,090,000 for the week ended September 19.

"The 4-week moving average was 6,154,500, a decrease of 39,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 6,193,750," the Labor Department said in a statement today.

Yesterday, payroll-processing firm ADP in its National Employment Report said that 254,000 jobs evaporated in the American private sector in September.

However, the report noted that the decrease was the smallest since July 2008.

Agencies

No raise for Hewlett-Packard employees

If you are a Hewlett-Packard employee, you don’t have a raise coming your way. According to an internal memo, the company plans to use the funds meant for raises and bonuses to fund pension plans and other benefits. Interestingly, the memo also indicates that the upper management has nothing to worry.

Employees have been notified by e-mail that they won’t receive a salary increase in fiscal 2009, which began in November. The world’s largest personal-computer maker is freezing salaries as part of Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd’s efforts to contain costs. The company has already gone ahead and cut jobs, closed offices and merged data centers to lift profit. It is also limiting travel, curtailing hiring and eliminating “favorite science projects” to save on research costs in 2009, Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said last month on a conference call.

Hewlett-Packard, which has 320,000 employees, declined to confirm the salary freeze. “In this difficult macroeconomic environment, we believe it is prudent and responsible to reduce costs where possible,” said spokeswoman Emma McCulloch. “HP has a longstanding and disciplined approach to managing costs in order to invest in the company’s growth.”

Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, the shares have dropped 34 per cent this year.

Hurd, who became CEO in 2005, received $25.3 million in total compensation in fiscal 2007.

Source: Economic Times