Few News Paper Clippings
While many large broking
houses have stopped new
recruitments, others have put their
expansion plans on hold. Employees
are bracing themselves for more
modest increments this year while
several sub brokers are examining
alternative careers. Recruitments
and job cuts in brokerage houses
operate on the lines of share
prices. The pace and the number of
retrenchments in a falling market is
twice than that of staff added in a
booming market. Vineet Bhatnagar,
MD of Man Financial — a large
broking house that predominantly
caters to institutional clients, says
his firm has decided to “go slow” on
all new recruitments. Other large
firms like Edelweiss Capital and
Motilal Oswal too have put a freeze
on new hiring, although officials
here point out that the situation is
not yet so dire as to consider
downsizing.
Believe it or not, a young
workforce in the retail space seems
to be the mantra for most retailers.
The average age of staff at Cinemax
India and Koutons is 25 and 30 at
Levi Strauss. Several retail brands
are relying on young honchos to steer
their businesses in a market where
getting skilled resources is a serious
challenge. Most retail companies
cater to the age group of 15–45. It
makes perfect sense to pick up young
honchos who find it easier to
customise services to this target
audience,” notes Kishore Bhatija,
CEO, Inorbit Malls. Growing at a
rapid pace, the biggest challenge that
lies ahead for this industry is meeting
the obvious demand supply gap. Add
to this the task of finding the quality
of leaders.
Patni Computer Systems has
laid off hundreds of employees citing
non-performance issues. “This was an
absolutely regular appraisal that is
important for any performance driven
organisation. It is something standard
we do every year. Employees who
have got a 0-1 rating on a scale of 5
typically form the basis for the first-
level shortlist. These are
performance based resignations,
we’ve not issued any termination
letters,” said Rajesh Padmanabhan,
executive vice-president and head-
global HR, Patni. He said the
comparable figure for last year was
148 employees. TCS had asked about
500 employees to leave for reasons
of nonperformance. Shortly after
that, multinational IBM was reported
to have laid off 700 freshers. In the
case of TCS, the figure was about
0.5% of its total workforce and for
IBM about 1% of its India workforce.
For Patni, the figure is closer to 3%
of its 14,800.
 German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG plans to cut
around 4% of its workforce as part of an overhaul and as a result of
the global economic downturn. Siemens wants to cut 16,750 jobs
globally, of which 12,600 are mainly in administration, to help Europe’s
biggest engineering group reach a savings target of 1.2 billion euros
($1.9 billion) by 2010 and boost profit margin levels. Another 4,150
jobs will be eliminated through the company’s restructuring
programme.

If IT/ITES companies are feeling the heat of the US

slowdown, recruitment companies for the sector appear more
than scorched. Though the severity of the impact has been mainly
felt by companies in entry-level staffing with some seeing a
whopping 60% fall in earnings, mid-level staffing firms are
fearing the worst in the days to come. “Earnings for recruitment
consultants have definitely slumped over the last six months. The
impact on earning from key accounts has dropped by 60% with
further impacts on the pricing front,” said TeamLease Services’
vice-president of permanent staffing, Sampath Shetty. “For some
individual consultants, the income is down to zero,” he added.
Typically, a small firm with 10-15 people and working in entry-level
staffing earns around Rs 15 lakh per month where employees
work on a low-fixed, high-commission salary. A 60% fall on such a
base could, in some cases, even be life threatening. “With the
metrics for hiring moving away from quantity to quality with
prescribed non-negotiable cost to company for candidates, these
expectations are marginalizing the recruitment companies’
productivity and pushing for more value adds at similar pricing,”
Mr. Shetty added.