Happy Times are Here Again – Indian Companies Set to Announce Pay Hikes

by sweta

After more than a year of money crunch, job loss and pay cuts; employees all over India have something to cheer about. As the corporates start recovering after the dreadful economy slowdown, the companies are gearing to reward their employees with bonus and pay hikes.

According to the latest report by Economic Times, employees across corporate India can expect a salary hike anywhere between 9 to 18 percent this year.

As per current trends, employees across sectors may get moderate to fat increments and salary hikes in the 9-18 percent range this year around. Pay-cuts, layoffs and heightened austerity measures are becoming a thing of the past, as it gets replaced with a buzz of promising bonuses.

The salary hike is expected in most companies belonging to telecom, retail, FMCG, automobiles and consumer durables sector. Last year a majority of companies had to bring down their head count. While many had resorted to a pay cut across the organisation, some had fired people in bulk.

Sandeep Chaudhary from Hewitt Associates was quoted as

“If we take a realistic look on expected salary hikes this year, it is surely going to be around 9-9.5 percent across sectors.”

He added, “Companies will focus on a more realistic approach towards salaries, as well as hiring.”

Where auto and mobile sector have been profitable and quite generous with their employees. While Maruti Suzuki is looking at a hike of 10-15 percent and an average bonus of about 100 percent this year, mobile giant Airtel is had offred an average bonus of 140-150 for junior level employees and 125 percent for senior level last year.

IT companies who have always been the highest paying sector have also decided on a good hike for its employees this year. Cognizant,SAP, VMware, Mahindra Satyam, TCS, Wipro, Infosys and Genpact are said to offer an increment of 7-15 percent at the operational level and 12-18 percent to the seniors. Wipro was among the first one to announce a hike of about 8-12 percent. At Stayam, employees can expect a hike anywhere between 8 to 20 percent and Infosys is looking at a salary hike in april even after a hike of 8% last year in October.

The job market which has been very slow for some time now has also started showing good signs lately. How do I know?

Haven’t you noticed the Naukri.com ad back on Television?

Cognizant staff to get promotions, higher bonus

Measures based on company performance, client plans, talent needs.

K. Bharat Kumar

Chennai, Jan. 18

Employees of Cognizant Technology Solutions have a lot to cheer for now.

An e-mail from the company's Chief Financial Officer, Mr Gordon Coburn, and the Chief People Officer, Mr Shankar Srinivasan, has assured them, this year, of ‘significantly higher levels of bonus,' ‘accelerated promotion and pay-revision cycles' and, the taking care of ‘2006 and prior campus batches' currently with the company.

The e-mail, a copy of which is with Business Line, says it has arrived at these measures “based on a careful assessment of the performance of Cognizant, input from our clients in terms of their plans and our review of the talent market in various geographies around the globe.” Typically for large industry players, if confidence stems from “clients' plans”, then a better year ahead is expected. Given Infosys' and TCS' upbeat performance for the December 2009 quarter, with the former saying that the ‘worst is behind us', Cognizant too could be seeing greener pastures ahead.

The e-mail touches upon the company's ‘associate reward and recognition plans for 2010' across four fronts.

Bonus

The bonus payouts for the year 2009 are planned for distribution in March this year at levels ‘significantly above recent years'.

While details are not available as to how much was paid out last year, industry watchers say that across the industry, bonus payouts could, in good times, exceed 100 per cent. (For instance, if your salary is Rs 100 and the variable component of your salary is Rs 30, then your variable pay could be anywhere between Rs 0 in a bad year to Rs 30 in a good year. In boom time, variable pay has exceeded 150 per cent in some companies in the industry.)

Promotion

This year, Cognizant aims to give promotions effective across May and July.

Typically this used to be effective July. For employees currently at designation below Manager, Cognizant would announce promotions in late April, effective May 1. It would also conduct an additional promotion round for this group in late 2010. For Managers and above, it would announce promotions in June, effective July 1. Interestingly, the e-mail says, “We expect to promote a substantially larger number of people than last year.”

Compensation

The company has also committed to an accelerated company-wide pay revision cycle that would become effective at the same time as promotion cycles in May and July.

For now, no further details are available and the e-mail only says, “We will conduct market analyses to determine the scale of the revisions, taking into account overall market conditions, our revenue plans, and our clients' spending patterns.”

The company also has a word for those who joined it in 2006 and prior batches, currently at Programmer (P) and Programmer Analyst (PA) levels.

For programmers

It recognises that, “given the global economic turmoil and our slower growth over the past few years… many in this group were disproportionally impacted.”

Hence Cognizant is planning a separate, off-cycle salary increment process for the India-based portion of this population with an effective date of January 1, 2010. This initiative will occur in February once the 2009 performance ratings are finalised, it says. “In addition, a substantial number of P and PA promotions will be announced in April and will be made effective May 1 {+t},” the e-mail says.

Cognizant picks up 700 Anna varsity students

Time to celebrate: Jubilant Anna University students celebrate their getting job offersfrom Cognizant Technology Solutions, in the presence of Dr P. Mannar Jawahar (right),Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, and Mr R. Ramkumar (second from left), Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Cognizant, at the university premises onTuesday.- Bijoy Ghosh

Hindu

Chennai, Dec. 22

The US-based Cognizant Technology Solutions offered jobs to over seven hundred students of Anna University on Tuesday. Though this was less than the 1,000 offers that Cognizant made last year, Dr P. Mannar Jawahar, Vice Chancellor, Anna University, is happy.“The numbers may be less from Cognizant, but we are still happy considering the downturn in the software industry,” he told Business Line.Cognizant was the first large recruiter this year in the university that includes the College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras Institute of Technology, Chrompet and Alagappa College of Technology.While Tata Consultancy Services, which is also a large recruiter, is visiting the campus on Wednesday, over 55 more companies across various sectors plan to visit in the next few days, he said.

The starting salary offered by Cognizant remained unchanged from last year, at Rs 3 lakh a year. Around 1,640 students took the test, of whom 1,345 were shortlisted and 700 were offered jobs, Dr Jawahar said.Before Cognizant, ‘core and dream' companies such as Caterpillar and Larsen & Toubro that offer a starting salary of over Rs 4 lakh have given job offers to around 300 students, he said.

Infosys, Cognizant and UST Global amongst those shortlisted by Wal-mart

MUMBAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), the world's largest retailer, has picked three IT vendors including India's Infosys Technologies (INFY.BO) for multi-year contracts worth over $600 million, the Business Standard said.

The other vendors are Cognizant Solutions (CTSH.O) and UST Global, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified source close to the development.

Initially the three vendors are expected to earn 2.5 billion to 3 billion rupees ($54 million-$65 million) each annually, which will rise as Wal-Mart increases outsourcing more work.

Infosys and Cognizant, which will provide application development and support, are expected to get a larger share of the contract, the paper said.

UST will be responsible for testing these applications, it said.

"What is more important is that these three vendors have now got a ticket to be in the club of Wal-Mart's list of preferred vendors which will help them in growing this account in the long run," the paper quoted the source as saying.

"We do not comment on market speculation," a spokeswoman for Infosys told Reuters.

Wal-Mart's media relations director, John Simley, said in am emailed reply to the paper: "We have a large and growing business and productive relationship with many Indian companies. We do not comment on speculations about the nature of any business relationship."