HYDERABAD: After a considerable number of tech professionals were terminated from their job roles over the past year, managing ‘employer branding’, a promotional activity focused at hiring prospective employees, seems to have become a challenging task for MNC’s. In the last one year, major tech firms, including Tech Mahindra, Cognizant Technology Services, and Verizon Data Services India, have axed hundreds of techies. With several of them dragging their bosses to labour department for conciliation meetings, companies have come under the spotlight and are being questioned about their HR practices.
Mahesh Kumar (Name Changed), an HR manager who represents an MNC at such conciliation meetings at labour department after it terminated several of its employees said that there is a sense of fear when negative reports of the organisation surface. “Whenever there are news reports coming up about employees or ex-employees seeking legal recourse, we hold internal communication meetings with our teams as anxiety is high among employees and there is certainly a sense of fear, he said.
Meanwhile, feedback websites like Glassdoor, where employees share details about their companies for the benefit of aspirants, are spreading a word of caution among job hoppers. “It is not just the HR practices, but various other parameters such as on-site opportunities and training facility are also of equal importance,” opined techie V Jagadeesh.
“We do not discount out what is spoken about us on Glassdoor or any other social media platforms. In fact, we study and review them,” Mahesh Kumar said. A recently published study in International Journal of Engineering and Management Research on A Study on Employer Branding in Multinational Companies in Hyderabad has seconded the changing perceptions of mid-level techies.
The study highlights that about 40 per cent employees are not satisfied with the reward strategies they received from their employers. That includes business climate, strategic direction of the business, unique work culture, and monetary benefits. “The role of an HR is not to worry about optimisation of personnel but to create a manpower which is multi-skilled, said J Ravikan Reddy, Founder and CEO, Pquest HR.