In the latest news, media reported that Indian IT major, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. will implement annual salary increases starting in August this year.
Cognizant Defers Salary Hikes to August
This sounds alarming as this is the second time the IT service provider has postponed salary hikes in over five months.
It appears that IT company, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. has once again postponed the salary hikes.
The company is now planning to implement it in August this year, as per the media report.
Reportedly, this is the second time the company has postponed salary hikes in over five months.
Earlier, Cognizant CEO S Ravi Kumar announced that salary hikes would begin on August 1, while bonuses for eligible employees would be distributed in March, during a town hall at the company’s newly renovated Kolkata office on Thursday.
Further, the company has directed the managers to communicate bonus details to their teams by March 11.
In a normal cycle, Cognizant distributes both hikes and bonuses in March.
But, under this new leadership – CEO Ravi Kumar, bonuses will be released in March while hikes are deferred to August.
An Effort to Address Rising Attrition
If we see the past years data, Cognizant’s last salary increases, ranging from 1% to 5%, were given in August of the previous year.
The early announcement of the salary hike this year may be an effort to address rising attrition rates.
The company’s voluntary attrition climbed to 15.9% by the end of 2024, up from 13.8% the previous year, in the tech services division, which represents the majority of the workforce.
Here Attrition refers to employees voluntarily leaving the company.
Cognizant’s voluntary attrition rate surpassed As of December 2024.
If we consider the competitors, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd has attrition (13%), Infosys Ltd (13.7%) and HCL Technologies Ltd (13.2%) in the past 12 months.
Please note here that TCS and Infosys’ figures include attrition in their IT services arms.
But, in the case of HCLTech, its data excludes digital process automation, as per the report.
