JOIN USAnand Mahindra tenders apology to sacked employee
Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra and C P Gurnani, MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra have tendered public apology to an unnamed employee, who was asked to quit by human resource executive at Tech Mahindra.
The move by Mahindra and Gurnani comes after the 6:45-minute long audio clip was uploaded onto SoundCloud, an online audio distribution platform in which the company’s HR executive was heard asking the employee to put in his papers by 10 am the next day or his services at the company will be terminated, went viral.
Anand Maindra took the micro-blogging site Twitter on Friday to apologise over the episode.
“I want to add my personal apology. Our core value is to preserve the dignity of the individual and we'll ensure this does not happen in future,” Mahindra tweeted from his official handle.
Joining him, Gurnani tweeted, “I deeply regret the way the HR rep & employee discussion was done. We have taken the right steps to ensure it doesn’t repeat in the future (sic).” Gurnani, till recently was also the chairman of industry body, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).
A letter signed by Vineet Nayyar, Vice Chairman, Tech Mahindra said, “Tech Mahindra has always regarded respect for colleagues, fairness and human dignity as core values, and has demonstrated these consistently over the years. We have become aware of the incident involving a conversation between and employee and a Company HR representative. We deeply regret the manner in which the discussion took place, and has taken necessary corrective steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again in the future.”
The letter also assured that any implementation of the business strategy will be done in “a manner that benefits our Rise philosophy and our group’s core values.”
Indian IT companies have tightened performance evaluation for their employees, eliminating most of those employees who do not match the set standards. The companies have also reduced people on the bench — who do not have projects on hand and look at improving their efficiency.
Many employees of Tech Mahindra have petitioned labour departments in Maharashtra seeking relief from “arbitrary sacking by the company”.
Tech Mahindra currently employs 117,693 people, and according to the sources had also planned layoff close to 1,000 employees.