Date:12/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/12/stories/2008091250140100.htm

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Satyam lays off 400 employees

A. Saye Sekhar

The terminations came as a rude shock to those thrown out
Most of them were in ‘S’ band with experience of two to five years

HYDERABAD: The city-based IT bellwether Satyam Computers has shown the door to 400 engineers and associates in Hyderabad, Pune and Visakhapatnam.

The terminations came as a rude shock to those thrown out, as they were not rookies at their jobs. Most of them were in ‘S’ band, as the company calls it, denoting their experience in the range of two to five years.

An associate, pleading anonymity, said that a head honcho of the company sent an e-mail cautioning the employees against not turning up at offices and preferring to remain on the bench. Sources said there were a large number of associates on the bench as they had no project on hand. Thanks to the global economic slowdown, big projects do not seem to be coming forth resulting in some employees remaining idle.

The Satyam management has been cautioning them either to move out of its rolls to a contractual employment offered by companies that outsource work to it or leave.

When contacted, S.V. Krishnan, Global Head, HR, said giving pink slips to those in the ‘S’ band was “not out of the ordinary and we do this as a matter of routine employee evaluation and development. There is no specific focus on levels during evaluation.”

Satyam had a bench capacity of 3.5-5 per cent and the projects were assigned based on the associates’ skills as and when the company got such a contract.

“The engagement model for associates in business wait (bench) would indeed help the associates update their skills. At least half of the five per cent identified in the performance improvement category would generally exit the system either voluntarily or involuntarily.” He, however, asserted that the company was well on track with its guidance of hiring 12,000-15,000 people for 2008-09.