At a time when many companies have hit a pause on hiring, and words like furloughs, pay cuts and job cuts are doing the rounds, French IT services firm Capgemini recently said that it will continue to digitally onboard new employees in India.
According to a report by Livemint, the French IT major has said that it will honour all the 8,000 placement offers made during campus placement drives. However, the company said their joining dates may be deferred due to delay in examinations owing to the pandemic.
The company has a significant presence in India with 125,000 employees, nearly half of its global headcount of 270,000.
“We will continue to hire as per plans and client requirements,” Ashwin Yardi, Chief Executive Officer, Capgemini India told Mint. He added that the hiring will be across freshers and laterals with a focus on new-age technologies such as digital, cloud, and data analytics.
“We hired more than 6000 employees in Q1 out of which approximately 4,000 are lateral hires and 2,000 are freshers,” said Yardi. “In Q2, we have rolled out offers to more than 4,000 lateral hires and will be onboarding all of them.” Capgemini follows the calendar year.
“We have more than 8,000 LOIs (letters of intent) with various campuses. Since there is impact of engineering examinations, the fresher onboarding will start once the exams are completed,” Yardi said. “Every year, the joining is always planned over 6 to 8 months in phased manner. At this point, we are confident of onboarding as per our commitment and annualised plans.”
Earlier this month, the company had announced that it has given a single-digit salary hike to 70% of its employees in India, effective April 1, 2020. The move will benefit the company’s 84,000 employees of its 1.2 lakh Indian workforce.
For senior consultants and managers and above, salary increments will be effective 1 July, with increment letters being released in June. “This will be done as per plan and in line with our commitment to ensure market competitiveness across all grades,” Yardi said. “Our variable pay assessment for year 2019 has been concluded and the pay-out has been made to all eligible employees along with the March 2020 payroll.”
Capgemini’s hiring, salary hikes, and promotions come at a time when other IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd, Infosys Ltd, and Wipro Ltd have suspended all such activities for now though campus offers will be honoured. While TCS and Infosys said they will not layoff any employees on grounds of covid-19, Wipro said it was considering “all options” to keep costs under control indicating it does not rule out layoffs.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused an unemployment crisis globally. The International Labour Organization has predicted that worldwide about 2.5 million jobs will be lost due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the US alone, nearly 10 million people have filed for unemployment benefits. The pandemic has forced businesses to close operations and employees have been sent on furloughs for indefinite periods.
