At a time when top Indian tech firms including TCS, Infosys and Wipro plan to slow down their linear growth by hiring less number of people, multinational software companies such as IBM, Accenture and Cap Gemini continue to hire more software professionals in order to expand their offshore capabilities. Despite lower growth in revenues from top markets such as the US and Europe, Indian offshore vendors are seeing an attrition rate of 11-13%.
“Our attrition rate is still around 11%, which is not significantly down,” said Pratik Kumar, executive VP-HR, Wipro. “We find that smaller captives operating in niche areas, apart from MNCs, are still hiring,” he added.
Captive organisations of large enterprises in the US and the UK are seeking to increase their offshore teams in order to lower their operational costs. Tesco, the world’s second-biggest retailer, plans to add a few hundreds more professionals to its existing team of around 3,000 employees at the Bangalore centre.
“We want this centre to become the engineering hub for us, and there is a lot of scope for scale expansion,” Mike McNamara, director (operations and information technology) at Tesco told ET in an interview earlier this month. The retailer saves around $60 million every year by outsourcing to India. Captives, such as Tesco, are seeking to hire professionals with specialised skills, which is opening newer avenues for experienced workers.
“Openings in the IT industry are becoming more specialised and specific with people looking at roles which are very clearly aligned with their skills,” said Madhu Rao, country head, Allegis India, which is a part of the $5-billion Allegis Group.
In another instance, Atos Origin – the European IT major – has plans to double its workforce in India from the existing level of 3,300 to 6,000 in the next one-year. Accenture has already announced that it would be increasing its India headcount from the current level of 37,000 to 50,000 in a year.
GC Jayaprakash, principal consultant at Stanton Chase International, said movement among IT pros is happening more with the laterals and those looking at moving to a different location. Today, openings in the IT industry are more to do with specific skills and are for professionals who have experience of 5-7 years.
Agencies
Showing posts with label tech firms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tech firms. Show all posts
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Asian tech firms force workers to take leave
When the global recession began to take a toll on high-tech manufacturers in Taiwan, the factories gave their workers a vacation that many would have just as soon skipped.
Putting workers on forced unpaid leave, often for one or more days a week, is a tactic being adopted around the world as firms seek to cut costs and keep skilled workers on the payroll, even if there is little work to do, so that they will have resources when orders pick up.
“When an economic downturn begins to take hold, employers knee-jerk into making dramatic changes,’’ said Darryl Green, president of Asia Pacific for human resources firm Manpower.
“But there are employers who will stop at nothing to try to retain their valuable workforce. These employers — often in the manufacturing sector where skills are hard to come by — consider innovative alternatives such as shorter working weeks and short-term shut-downs.’’
Employment specialists say the phenomenon is not unique to Taiwan, and is used more broadly by manufacturers in cyclical industries, ranging from electronics makers in South Korea, to car makers in Britain, and manufacturers in Germany.
In Taiwan, the trend of forcing workers to take leave without pay, euphemistically called “unpaid vacation’’ in Chinese, began in the memory chip sector which experienced its worst-ever slump throughout most of 2008.
From there this cost savings measure has quietly spread to other key sectors such as LCD manufacturing and other chips.
In one of the clearest and most sobering signs of the times, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker and one of Taiwan’s most profitable tech firms, said this month it will roll out its own forced leave without pay system in 2009. TSMC’s main rival, UMC, is taking similar measures.
Taiwan makes 70 per cent of the world’s made-to-order chips which are used in everything from computers to cell phones and MP3 players. TSMC and UMC, which are the biggest players in Taiwan, saw their collective sales plunge 35 percent in November from a year before, with TSMC posting its worst monthly sales in 3-years.
TSMC laid down the cold reality of its situation to employees in a December 3 letter from CEO Rick Tsai, who said he feared the current economic downturn could last for a “fairly long time.’’
“The company must do its utmost to lower costs,’’ Tsai wrote. “At the same time, we will also do all we can to protect employees’ jobs. Under these circumstances manufacturing departments have decided to take a certain amount of unpaid furlough in December. All other departments will begin to do the same on January 1.”
Sources: Agencies
Putting workers on forced unpaid leave, often for one or more days a week, is a tactic being adopted around the world as firms seek to cut costs and keep skilled workers on the payroll, even if there is little work to do, so that they will have resources when orders pick up.
“When an economic downturn begins to take hold, employers knee-jerk into making dramatic changes,’’ said Darryl Green, president of Asia Pacific for human resources firm Manpower.
“But there are employers who will stop at nothing to try to retain their valuable workforce. These employers — often in the manufacturing sector where skills are hard to come by — consider innovative alternatives such as shorter working weeks and short-term shut-downs.’’
Employment specialists say the phenomenon is not unique to Taiwan, and is used more broadly by manufacturers in cyclical industries, ranging from electronics makers in South Korea, to car makers in Britain, and manufacturers in Germany.
In Taiwan, the trend of forcing workers to take leave without pay, euphemistically called “unpaid vacation’’ in Chinese, began in the memory chip sector which experienced its worst-ever slump throughout most of 2008.
From there this cost savings measure has quietly spread to other key sectors such as LCD manufacturing and other chips.
In one of the clearest and most sobering signs of the times, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker and one of Taiwan’s most profitable tech firms, said this month it will roll out its own forced leave without pay system in 2009. TSMC’s main rival, UMC, is taking similar measures.
Taiwan makes 70 per cent of the world’s made-to-order chips which are used in everything from computers to cell phones and MP3 players. TSMC and UMC, which are the biggest players in Taiwan, saw their collective sales plunge 35 percent in November from a year before, with TSMC posting its worst monthly sales in 3-years.
TSMC laid down the cold reality of its situation to employees in a December 3 letter from CEO Rick Tsai, who said he feared the current economic downturn could last for a “fairly long time.’’
“The company must do its utmost to lower costs,’’ Tsai wrote. “At the same time, we will also do all we can to protect employees’ jobs. Under these circumstances manufacturing departments have decided to take a certain amount of unpaid furlough in December. All other departments will begin to do the same on January 1.”
Sources: Agencies
Asian tech firms force workers to take leave
When the global recession began to take a toll on high-tech manufacturers in Taiwan, the factories gave their workers a vacation that many would have just as soon skipped.
Putting workers on forced unpaid leave, often for one or more days a week, is a tactic being adopted around the world as firms seek to cut costs and keep skilled workers on the payroll, even if there is little work to do, so that they will have resources when orders pick up.
“When an economic downturn begins to take hold, employers knee-jerk into making dramatic changes,’’ said Darryl Green, president of Asia Pacific for human resources firm Manpower.
“But there are employers who will stop at nothing to try to retain their valuable workforce. These employers — often in the manufacturing sector where skills are hard to come by — consider innovative alternatives such as shorter working weeks and short-term shut-downs.’’
Employment specialists say the phenomenon is not unique to Taiwan, and is used more broadly by manufacturers in cyclical industries, ranging from electronics makers in South Korea, to car makers in Britain, and manufacturers in Germany.
In Taiwan, the trend of forcing workers to take leave without pay, euphemistically called “unpaid vacation’’ in Chinese, began in the memory chip sector which experienced its worst-ever slump throughout most of 2008.
From there this cost savings measure has quietly spread to other key sectors such as LCD manufacturing and other chips.
In one of the clearest and most sobering signs of the times, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker and one of Taiwan’s most profitable tech firms, said this month it will roll out its own forced leave without pay system in 2009. TSMC’s main rival, UMC, is taking similar measures.
Taiwan makes 70 per cent of the world’s made-to-order chips which are used in everything from computers to cell phones and MP3 players. TSMC and UMC, which are the biggest players in Taiwan, saw their collective sales plunge 35 percent in November from a year before, with TSMC posting its worst monthly sales in 3-years.
TSMC laid down the cold reality of its situation to employees in a December 3 letter from CEO Rick Tsai, who said he feared the current economic downturn could last for a “fairly long time.’’
“The company must do its utmost to lower costs,’’ Tsai wrote. “At the same time, we will also do all we can to protect employees’ jobs. Under these circumstances manufacturing departments have decided to take a certain amount of unpaid furlough in December. All other departments will begin to do the same on January 1.”
Sources: Agencies
Putting workers on forced unpaid leave, often for one or more days a week, is a tactic being adopted around the world as firms seek to cut costs and keep skilled workers on the payroll, even if there is little work to do, so that they will have resources when orders pick up.
“When an economic downturn begins to take hold, employers knee-jerk into making dramatic changes,’’ said Darryl Green, president of Asia Pacific for human resources firm Manpower.
“But there are employers who will stop at nothing to try to retain their valuable workforce. These employers — often in the manufacturing sector where skills are hard to come by — consider innovative alternatives such as shorter working weeks and short-term shut-downs.’’
Employment specialists say the phenomenon is not unique to Taiwan, and is used more broadly by manufacturers in cyclical industries, ranging from electronics makers in South Korea, to car makers in Britain, and manufacturers in Germany.
In Taiwan, the trend of forcing workers to take leave without pay, euphemistically called “unpaid vacation’’ in Chinese, began in the memory chip sector which experienced its worst-ever slump throughout most of 2008.
From there this cost savings measure has quietly spread to other key sectors such as LCD manufacturing and other chips.
In one of the clearest and most sobering signs of the times, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker and one of Taiwan’s most profitable tech firms, said this month it will roll out its own forced leave without pay system in 2009. TSMC’s main rival, UMC, is taking similar measures.
Taiwan makes 70 per cent of the world’s made-to-order chips which are used in everything from computers to cell phones and MP3 players. TSMC and UMC, which are the biggest players in Taiwan, saw their collective sales plunge 35 percent in November from a year before, with TSMC posting its worst monthly sales in 3-years.
TSMC laid down the cold reality of its situation to employees in a December 3 letter from CEO Rick Tsai, who said he feared the current economic downturn could last for a “fairly long time.’’
“The company must do its utmost to lower costs,’’ Tsai wrote. “At the same time, we will also do all we can to protect employees’ jobs. Under these circumstances manufacturing departments have decided to take a certain amount of unpaid furlough in December. All other departments will begin to do the same on January 1.”
Sources: Agencies
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