Cognizant Will Upskill 5000 Employees; But 10 Lakh IT Employees Are Unfit For New Technologies

If you are an IT employee, then there is both good news and bad news.

The good news is that IT majors are now pushing for reskilling, and upskilling employees, and this is good for the entire industry.

But the bad news is that, as per some ‘experts’, 10 lakh IT employees in India are unfit for being reskilled in new-age technologies.

Cognizant Will Upskill 5000 Senior Employees

As per some reports, IT behemoth Cognizant has decided to reskill and upskill 5000 senior employees from their global campuses.

These employees to be reskilled belong to the mid-level seniority, and it is not clear how many Indians would be part of this reskilling drive.

Chief financial officer Karen McLoughlin informed that they are attempting to redefine the ‘pyramid’, by upskilling 5000 senior employees, and then putting them back into the ‘market’, so that that they become more productive.

This is certainly a piece of positive news coming in from Cognizant camp since in the last few weeks, only layoff news was coming in. 

After they suggested that 13,000 employees would be fired, from all over the world, Indian IT Employee Unions claimed that 6000+ Indian employees would be fired, as the company has lost a major content project from Facebook.

IT Employee Unions are asking Govt to intervene now.

But.. 10 Lakh IT Employees Cannot Be Trained?

As per some experts from the human resource and recruitment industry, more than 10 lakh or 1 million IT employees are unfit to learn new-age technologies such as Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning and more.

10 lakh employees amount to 30% of the entire IT workforce in India right now. 

This has been confirmed by Yeshab Giri, head, (technologies and specialities), Randstad India, as he said that when the need arises for IT companies to trim their workforce, then the ones who cannot be reskilled, and retrained are the first to get fired.

This observation is crucial, because NASSCOM, India’s premier IT lobby had predicted that 40% of all IT employees in India will need reskillig, in order to survive. 

Mid Level Employees Under Fire?

Statements and observations shared by recruitment experts stands perfectly in line with the recent developments, when it comes to firing of mid-level to senior employees,

Ex Infosys Board Member and IT veteran TV Mohandas Pai has already declared that senior employees shouldn’t think that they are not entitled for fat salaries.

Meanhwhile another IT veteran from Infosys, V Balakrishnan, who was the Chief Financial Officer at Infosys, has predicted that 1.2 lakh IT employees can be fired, as companies are looking at saving costs, from every end.

In fact, every IT major in India can fire upto 20,000 employees in the coming days.

Infosys and other firms have repeatedly indicated that they will not shy away from terminating employees, in order to save costs.