Capgemini offers salary hikes and promotions amidst pandemic

Recruitment delayed due to incompletion of eighth semester exams of engineering students

Amidst lay-offs and salary cuts, Information Technology (IT) company, Capgemini has rolled out wage hikes and promotions for all its employees in India, a Business Standard report said.

Chief Executive Officer of Capgemini India, Ashwin Yardi said, “Ours is probably the only company (in India) which has offered salary increments. Of course, there are eligibility criteria but across the board, we have announced increments and promotions while the variables (payments) were announced in April.”

The amount of hikes is said to be in high single digits.

Yardi said that the french firm is not going to retrench its staff to deal with Covid-19-induced business impact. Instead, it will follow its usual performance based method to review its employees, which results in some employee exits. “Traditionally, 4-5 per cent of employees who figure in the bottom are given two-three months to better their performance,” he said.

In terms of recruitment, the CEO said that the company may have to calibrate its hiring plans. Capgemini had initially decided to recruit 25,000 this year, of which 15,000 would be lateral hires.

Owing to the delay in eighth semester examinations at engineering colleges, fresher onboarding is getting delayed. However, lateral hires will remain intact and the company will honour every offer it has made.

Capgemini’s decision to offer salary hikes and promotion comes at a time when large national and international companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro have decided to stall wage hikes to conserve cash and effectively deal with the economic impact of the ongoing pandemic.

The Paris-headquartered firm is the third largest multinational IT employer after IBM and Accenture. Almost 1,25,000 Indians are employed by Capgemini, which is over 50 per cent of its global employee base.