Cognizant’s Recipe To Fire More Employees: Reduce Bench Time By 61%, Pressurise Employees?

American IT behemoth Cognizant, whose ex-CEO earned Rs 30 lakh per day, has cunningly devised a new strategy to fire more employees.

As per reports coming in, they have reduced the bench time by 61%, for all employees, and this means that more and more ‘idle’ employees will be fired in the coming days.

We decode the logic here..

Cognizant’s Bench Time Reduced By 61%

When an IT employee is not allocated any project due to any reason, they are put on ‘bench’, which is the jargon for utilized resource pool.

When a new project needs new resources, then project managers search for matching skills in the bench, and then accordingly allocate them projects.

However, every company has a fixed timeline for allowing an employee on the bench: Beyond that, that employee is either reskiled, or fired.

In Cognizant, the bench time used to be 90 days, or three months, which is a reasonable and fair duration for an employee to pull up their socks, and make themselves skilled enough to be able to work on a project.

However, the bench time has now been reduced to just 35 days, which is a reduction of 61%.

Cognizant Makes It Tough For Employees

Now, as the bench time has been reduced from 90 days to mere 35 days, it will become easier for the HR to fire employees. 

Imagine the pressure it will have on the employees, who are on the bench.. Every day would be a test for them, and every day, they will need to prove themselves, else a pink slip would be handed over.

And such will be the circumstances, that the employee will have no chance to protest, and will have to leave the company.

This is certainly a shrewd move by the IT behemoth, and it reflects on their desperation to terminate employees, and to increase their revenues.

Which Employees Will Be Fired?

During an interview, when Cognizant CEO was asked the criteria based on which they will fire 7000 employees globally, he said, “It’s not aligned to one business unit or vertical, it’s broad-based. What I’m trying to do is right-size the pyramid so that we remove some middle management and senior management without impacting customer engagement or satisfaction or client centricity..”

This clearly showcases, how Cognizant is planning the mass layoffs.

We had earlier reported that upto 6000-7000 employees in India can be terminated, as Cognizant has lost some crucial projects, and are making plans to reduce workforce, and increase revenues.

Out of 2.9 lakh global employees, 70% of them are in India. IT Employee Unions are up in arms against Congnizant, as they have termed the process of terminations as ‘unjustified’..

We will keep you updated, as more details come in. 

Update: The article, by mistake, mentioned 157%, instead of 61%, as the total bench time reduced. The error has been rectified.