Tech Mahindra
Another company that was in the news for all the wrong reasons was Tech Mahindra. While layoffs has become a norm in the tech industry, but the manner in which HR departments conduct these layoffs has become a source of contention. For instance, a senior staffer at Tech Mahindra was served marching orders, and a junior HR executive of the company informs about the termination in curt language and gives him just 24 hours to move out - this shows an absolute lack of empathy and the inhuman way layoffs being conducted. After the audio transcript of the layoff process went viral in social media, the company’s top management apologized and promised it will revisit the termination processes.
Coming back to the performance of the company during FY 17, the company’s MD, C P Gurnani while announcing Q 4 FY 17 results said that, “The industry is going through a paradigm shift amid changing demand pattern from the clients, technological changes, and the requirement for significant skill enhancement. We have responded to those changes quite proactively by reimagining the business, imbibing a culture of innovation encouraging reskilling and retraining of our workforce wherever necessary.”
In the Q 4 earnings call, C P Gurnani further stated, “As a sector, on one hand, some of the challenges are daunting and clearly the opportunities are exciting. So coming back to FY’17, some headwinds, some positive movement, overall a mixed bag of a quarter. Enterprise business grew 3.4%; Service Provider business has stabilized, that is showing growth.
The company’s Products business continues to be little asymmetrical because certain quarters it does well and certain quarters the response is not all that great. Reflecting on that Gurnani said, “We obviously need to add a few more products to bring little more stability into that business but in this quarter ( Q4) if there was a drag I would say that was planned drag because of Network Services and a few surprises on the Products business. But overall as a year, BFSI, Manufacturing, and Retail did exceptionally well; BFSI grew 36% constant currency, Manufacturing grew 20% in constant currency, Retail grew about 18% in constant currency and overall the Enterprise business almost grew 12% in constant currency, clearly ahead of the industry. Overall, when I look at both the communication pipeline and the Enterprise Services pipeline, I think it is a better pipeline than what I had around the same time last year.”
Gurnani also indicated about some of the challenges. He said, ‘I can only promise you that as a management team I am conscious that I need to get some of the challenging parts of the business out of the way and we also need to improve some of our operating margins. Those two are clearly our focus areas. The third focus area for us is re- skilling.