IBM may sack a few thousand workers in India

IBM might let go of a few thousand employees from its Indian unit, which employs one out of three workers globally. IBM might join local peers such as Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, and Tech Mahindra to prune staff as the information technology (IT) sector faces technology shifts towards automation and from manning legacy system towards digital and cloud. IBM India is looking at a target of “achieving 100 per cent utilisation” across all projects, a person familiar with the development said. For example, if a project currently has eight software engineers, roughly two of them are released and redeployed on other projects to achieve full utilisation across projects. “However, no one is kept idle now,” an engineer at IBM said. “In some cases, people have to upgrade themselves with new technology skills to get redeployed. But, those who are not willing are at risk and are often told to go.”

Kris Lakshmikanth, chairman and managing director of The Head Hunters India, echoes the engineer at the company.

“If you are on the bench at IBM, you are in trouble. While net addition has come down, the company is trimming its workforce gradually,” said Lakshmikanth. IBM does not disclose its India staff strength. An IBM spokesperson said, “This is factually incorrect. We are not going to comment further on rumours and speculation.”

Industry body Nasscom has maintained that workforce realignment in IT services linked to performance appraisal processes is a regular feature every year.