The COVID-19 pandemic resultant lockdowns have massively impacted businesses across various segments all over the world. Businesses are resorting to massive cost-cutting measures like job cuts, salary cuts, curbing unnecessary expenditures such as rents, marketing, and more to stay afloat.
As per reports, a minimum of 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh IT/ITeS employees are likely to be a victim of job cuts over the next few quarters due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read on to find out more…
Predictions by Experts!
According to a CNBC report published in July this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to about 30,000 job cuts in the IT and BPO sectors in India, wherein 60,000 employees were furloughed (leave without pay).
According to the Business Standards report, many IT firms can reduce their workforce force by 3-5%.
As per McKinsey & Company report had said nearly half of the workforce in the IT services firms will be ‘irrelevant’ over the next 3-4 years.
The Reason and Consequences of Workforce Reduction!
The Indian Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Management (BPM) sector employ around 4.4 million people, directly and indirectly.
The reason can be the acceleration of automation and renegotiation or premature-wrapping up of IT contracts.
The reduction of the workforce can increase the benched employees as they won’t be deployed on any billable project. Although, the IT companies claim they are training benched staff for redeployment on new billable projects.
In addition, adding to the tensions of the companies is the delayed payments from clients as they are also cutting back on expenditures. HR at a leading IT company warned that the ‘July to September quarter may see more pressure and possibly more job losses.’
The McKinsey report stated, “…because of the changing technology, the most affected will be the professionals aged 35 and above, for it would be very difficult for them to get jobs.” Retraining the 50-60 % employees will be a challenge for the industry, the report says.
What Is the Way To Sustain?
As the nature of work changes with changing technology, millions of people may need to switch occupations or upskill themselves.
To enable employees to acquire data analytics automation, machine learning (ML), RPA skills, that could boost productivity, save time, and enable a better work-life balance, many employers are offering access to learning courses on Coursera, Udemy.
Many IT companies like Tech Mahindra with its Upskilling-as-a-Service (UaaS), Google with its Google Career Certificates, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) with its TCS iON, and others have launched or are coming up with their own learning platforms to help upskill their employees as well as fresh graduates.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.