HYDERABAD: Automation of services shook the IT industry like never before. Hundreds of non-performing employees were being shown the doors even in big companies here. Bank of America as part of its yearend review processes allegedly asked hundreds of employees to quit. Companies like Sutherland were undertaking monthly lay-off activity and slowly reducing the strength.
According to an employee of Bank of America Continuum Solutions who was asked to leave, “A lot of us were asked to leave. We were given two options, either to take the compensation and leave immediately, or serve the notice period and leave. I was surprised by this because, in previous years, so many employees were not asked to leave in one-go. This is the second time in 2017. During the mid-year review process, some of them were asked to leave.”
Recently, Verizon threw out hundreds of employees. However, Bank of America maintained decorum in terminating the workers, said the employee. Several attempts were made to reach out to the HR department of the Bank of America but there was no response.
On the other hand, some companies were resorting to monthly termination like in the case of Sutherland Global Services Inc. According to sources from the company, “A lot of the employees are living with insecurity of being shown the doors. Since July almost every month people are being thrown out without being given any prior notice. The person is suddenly being informed that his or her access has been blocked and should give the ID card and leave. The only reason that they are citing is that clients are not giving work. Some of the teams were completely dissolved.”
Experts said the number of such terminations were high last year and would be the same this year as well. Sundeep Kumar Makthala, global president of Telangana Information Technology Association (TITA), said, “During the performance reviews major layoffs happened in 2017. This trend is likely to continue in 2018 as well. Initially, the developer used to be separate and the operations team used to be different. With the advent of Dev Ops, the works of both the personnel are now combined. Developer himself puts the scripts of operations folks reducing the manual intervention.”
People who understand automation and up skill themselves would move ahead.
People who understand automation and up skill themselves would move ahead. Concurring with this, a senior HR said, "The process of elimination of low value-added services or low performer is natural. Business cycles are becoming shorter and project cycles are changing faster, products are getting deployed more rapidly. But these changes are happening globally. The markets are global, so the impacts of the recruitment in terms of layoffs are becoming global phenomenon. However, how to let the people go is not yet streamlined in our country. IT industry is nascent compared to others and so handles them immaturely."
While traditionally, yearend is low on recruitments, most of the companies cut down heavily on employment in the recent past.
