The next biggest worry for Mahindra Satyam is staff exodus

BANGALORE | HYDERABAD: O R N Suresh, the 33-year-old manager working on a British Petroleum (BP) project at Mahindra Satyam, the decision not to take up job offers from rival Indian firms has not really been a smart move. It was quite risky, to say the least, to continue working in a company which was witnessing a few contracts move to rival IT companies. Infact, after BP decided to shift projects from his company to TCS and Wipro earlier this year, things were not the same at Mahindra Satyam.

“We never had any issues with the delivery of projects, and even though I had an offer to serve at Wipro for another oil firm some eight months ago, I thought Satyam offered better job satisfaction,” says Suresh.

As Mahindra Satyam tries its best to regain the faith of customers, employees and investors, the company faces a daunting task. While the global recession ensured that voluntary attrition remained abysmally low, the improving business environment will soon witness rivals wooing the talent which is available. And they are sure to poach in on the highly skilled hands who are willing to jump the fence at Mahindra Satyam.

Some 400 professionals who are at present working for BP at Satyam will soon become redundant after BP completely shifts the projects to rival TCS and Wipro over the next few months.

Apart from customer attrition, many Satyam employees are also realising that the new management’s relentless focus on pruning the costs means far less job security than nine months ago.

“The Rajus were extremely good at dealing with people, whereas the Mahindras have created a lot of discomfiture in the organisation by driving away our senior leadership and imposing their decisions on us. This makes us feel like outsiders. But for the fraud, an average Satyamite will still prefer Raju to the Mahindras as an employer,” said a senior employee who is currently working for banking and financial services customers at Mahindra Satyam.
The Satyam scam doesn’t seem to have dented the image of B Ramalinga Raju, especially among the employees, who still repose a lot of faith in him and the previous management.

A worsening global economic crisis ensured that there were no jobs available for those seeking better options in the market. For hundreds of Satyam employees who were on the bench, the new cost-cutting strategies and tactics were not really very employee-friendly.

“You cannot really blame the new management - even Wipro was forced to lay off many of it employees during the recession,” said another employee who is currently working at the company’s back office division. However, many of the employees feel that the new management is not able to show empathy to the present employees the way the old Satyam management used to.

Perhaps it is this disconnect between the employees and the management which will work in favour of other IT companies who are eagerly waiting to recruit skilled hands willing to jump the boat. “We always thought Satyam was an over democratic company. It was a friendly company where even those on the bench was treated royally. Tech Mahindra has adopted a hire-and-fire policy and the employee satisfaction levels are very low,” said an associate with the Citigroup project.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest worries which Mahindra Satyam has to face is its fading popularity as an employer. And, whenever business picks up, the company may lose out to rival companies in acquiring new talent given the image it has conjured up in the market.

“I will never recommend anybody to join Satyam. Firstly, from a $2 billion company, it has been reduced to a mid-sized IT player. Secondly, the new management is yet to visualise and comprehend the scale of Satyam’s operations, employee and customer expectations. It’s like a cafe owner buying Taj Krishna. Moreover, with no big projects on the cards, I do not think anybody should risk their career by taking up a job there,” said a Merrill Lynch project head.

Large multinational technology firms such as Accenture and IBM, apart from domestic rivals have already started their recruiting campaigns. “The management’s toughest challenge now is to retain the workforce they have. With Accenture and IBM conducting walk-in interviews every Saturday, more than a quarter of Satyam’s associates’ resumes are circulating in these offices,” said a Mahindra Satyam employee working for an insurance customer.

TCS to hire about 25,000 in 2010-11

Indicating a revival of business opportunities, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has said that it will recruit about 25,000 people in 2010-11.

In 2009-10, the company has absorbed 1,500 in the second quarter and would add 8,000 more this quarter.

The IT major has said that it would send appointment letters to the remaining 15,385 candidates in the last quarter of the financial year.

At present, the company, which employs 1.41 lakh people, registered an attrition rate of 11.50 per cent for 12 months.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Mr Ajoy Mukherjee, Head (Global HR) of TCS, said if the number were as big as 24,885 the company had planned to induct this year, it would not be far away from that target.

Mr Ajoy Mukherjee was here in connection with Sangam, the company's annual interface with the industry and academic institutes.

“We are finalising the business plan for the next year. We are going to campuses as the students enter their eighth semester,” he said.

Mr N Chandrasekaran, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, has announced that it would fund 200 PhD students in computer science research, 40 each in the next five years, at various institutes.

“At a time when new technologies are changing business models rapidly, there is an urgent need for more focussed research to stay ahead of the learning curve. The TCS Research Scholars programme will help enlarge the research and development agenda,” he said.

Plan for verticals

Though the company had significant presence in several verticals, the company had decided to accelerate pace of growth in some other verticals in which it was having relatively smaller presence. “We are going to increase focus on pharma, aerospace, retail and utilities,” he added.

He said the company would continue to focus on the emerging markets such as Latin America, India and Asia Pacific and Caribbean.

Pai denies ‘turf war' at Infosys

BANGALORE: The news of two Infosys top executives leaving the company due to various reasons, has given air to the rumor that a turf war is brewing in the top echelons of the IT behemoth, however, top brass of the company categorically denied any such thing.

Recently, a citizen journalist website, citing sources claimed that there was a “bitter turf war” within the company which puts Infosys at a risk of “losing some of the most respected executives in India.” “There existed two extremely strong factions within Infosys - Nandan Nilekani and Mohandas Pai…A united face to the world, the continuous tension between the two head honchos was a well kept secret restricted to the inner circle.

Those in Nandan’s faction (read Amitabh Chaudhary) are slowly being edged out of the inner circle after Nandan left the top post.

Latest to hit the bandwagon are Rishi Jain (AVP and Head of Corporate Planning at Infosys BPO) and Purnima Menon (Head - Marketing for Infosys BPO),” the website said.

Infosys HR Head, Mohandas Pai told Express, “There is no such turf war. Joydeep is leaving but he had put in his papers three months ago for personal reasons and we would be finalizing his successor shortly.” “Rishi and purnima have not resigned!” he added.

The resignation of Joydeep, who heads the Knowledge Process Outsourcing business of the company, was reported by news papers on Thursday.

Knowledge services contribute about 10 per cent of Infosys BPO’s annual revenue of over Rs 1,450 crore. Joydeep took over from Ramit Sethi, who quit last year to head the KPO practice at Wipro.

Amitabh Chaudhry, who took over as the Chief Executive of Infosys BPO in March 2006, had reportedly submitted his resignation on Tuesday.

The BPO arm of Infosys employs about 16,000 staff and offers finance and accounting, human resource and legal services outsourcing.

Chaudhry who is tipped to join HDFC Standard Life Insurance to head its business in India as CEO could not be contacted and HDFC Standard Life Insurance spokesperson declined to comment.

Wipro to hire sacked staffers

BANGALORE: If you are a pink slip recipient from Wipro, here’s a piece of good news. Wipro plans to rehire some of the employees it fired a year ago. "Non-performance was the reason for these separations. However, we are open to rehire some of these people who were fired by us a year ago, if they come back to us with additional skill sets. A one-year window would have been enough for them to acquire some additional skills," said Joseph John, vice-president (HR) in Wipro Infotech, the business that looks at the India and Middle-East markets.

The tech major's involuntary attrition rate has gone up by 2 percentage points in the last 16 months. Wipro Infotech said it would also resume campus hiring from January. "We are looking at hiring over 1,000 laterals during the fiscal and 1,000 freshers from campuses in January," said John.

The division, which recruited 1,000 people in the first six months of the fiscal, expects hiring numbers in the second half of the year to be more than double of that.

The additional people requirement comes with Wipro winning a slew of large projects in India and the Middle-East, and also to cater to the growing requirements of existing accounts. The company hired 200 people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt recently.


Wipro is also hiring for its Global Service Management Centre in Mysore with almost 5% jobs earmarked for differently-abled people.

Wipro Infotech is planning to raise the ratio of its women employees from 13% now to 20% in the next two years.
On salary hikes, John said the company had not budgeted a hike at the start of the fiscal. "But we have decided to raise salaries in the fourth quarter across the board."

Monish, Bangalore, says: What an Idea sirjee!!!! Do wipro really have an HR and Startergy Team.. or all has been pink slipped for non-performance.... umm....I pity wipro and its future. Beware dear Wipro Mgmt its time you realize for your mistakes and pay for them dearly.
[10 Nov, 2009 1644hrs IST]

karthik, chennai, says: why would any one who has been laid of at a time of crisis risk joining the same company again?.I bet there will be 0 takers.
[10 Nov, 2009 1631hrs IST]

Amit, Bangalore, says: what a non-sense! One yr back they fired them on performance basis and now they are hiring back. What improvement one can do who is sitting at home for 1 year? They just want to hire the same resources at much lower cost. All this propaganda of firing and rehiring is to save cost nothing else. Actually Wipro is the worst company with no ethics among all indian IT companies.....