Will TCS reduce the salary of campus recruits?

IT services company TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) has announced that it would revise the compensation package of campus recruits. Under the changed structure, TCS trainees will no longer be paid the variable component of the compensation - which works out at Rs. 5,000 per month or 19-20 percent of the total annual pay packet of Rs. 3.1 lakh - offered to them during their in-campus recruitment.

Ajoy Mukherjee, Global Head, Human Resources, TCS said, "As part of a compensation restructuring exercise, freshers joining the company this quarter onwards will not be eligible for variable pay during the training period. Restructuring trainees' salaries is being done from the point of view of productivity so that they get accustomed to the fact that variable pay depends on performance."

Last year, the company had made campus offers to 24,885 students. Of this, the company is expecting around 19,000-20,000 students to join. Going by this number, the company is expected to save around Rs. 10 crore per month by altering the variable part of salary for trainees. For six months, the savings would be Rs. 60 crore. Mukherjee said, "The company would be able to take on board all campus recruits in the current fiscal itself."

However, other IT giants like Infosys and Wipro are not fiddling with the compensation package of trainees. Infosys decides on the variables based on a test conducted after 18 weeks of initial training. Mohandas Pai, HR head, Infosys said, "Those who score four out of five are entitled to variables." Wipro claims to pay the variable part to its employees from the beginning of the training period.

Now, it would be interesting to see, what steps these companies take for campus recruitment in next fiscal. TCS is yet to decide on how these campus offers would be made in the next fiscal.

Agencies

Software to reduce non-compliance risks

Hewlett Packard (HP) plans to unveil a new document and records management software - TRIM - aimed at reducing an organization's risk of non-compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements over the next few months in India.

Talking to CXOtoday Kris Brown, TRIM marketing manager, HP APAC, said, "We are likely to roll out the software in the coming months and will start with the manpower for sales force and also the training. The software was originally developed in Australia and later acquired by HP."

Globally, there are more than 20,000 regulations that businesses need to comply with, including the significant legislations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and BASEL-II. In India, specific regulations mandate on how companies manage and store their information, including the IT Act, Indian Evidence Act and SEBI Clause 49, but most of them are not enforced yet by the Indian government, said Brown.

Meeting these guidelines also increases the return on investments for any organization, Brown said.

HP TRIM software is a best-practice document and records management system (DRMS) that reduces your risk of non-compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements while increasing security, data integrity, productivity and accountability.

In India, HP is targeting Central and state government departments, public-sector undertakings (PSUs), organizations and banking and financial institutions.

HP's Bangalore lab, which has been doing software development for the information management and achieving, will also handle the customization of the TRIM software as well.

CXOtoday.com

Alcatel-Lucent to cut 1,000 jobs; To reduce 5,000 contractors

Telecom major Alcatel-Lucent will cut 1,000 managerial posts and remove 5,000 contractors as part of its costs-saving initiatives.

"The company expects to reduce the number of managers by approximately 1,000 and the number of contractors by approximately 5,000," it said in a statement today.

"It will also complete its existing restructuring initiatives as well as seek savings in real estate, support functions and discretionary spending".

The firm would initiate a set of strong actions designed to reduce its break-even point by one billion euro per year in both 2009 and 2010, according to the statement.

Further, Alcatel-Lucent would be consolidating its global R&D centres. "Other actions will be taken to have a more agile R&D, such as further simplifying the Carrier Product Group from 6 to 4 divisions," the statement added.

As part of its strategic transformation, the telecom major would be focusing on service providers and enterprises markets, among others.

"We want to stimulate a sustainable business model for the industry that will fuel innovation and the capital investment required to expand the overall web experience to more people and businesses," Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen said.

For the full year 2009, the firm anticipates the market for telecommunications equipment and related deployment services to be down between 8 to 12 per cent at constant exchange rate.

Source: Agencies