US-based IT major Cognizant has promoted 24,000 employees globally and rolled out wage hikes based on performance for 1.6 lakh employees, Rajesh Nambiar, Chairman and Managing Director, Cognizant India, has said.
“We are also rewarding about 160,000 employees with merit increases globally and have promoted more than 24,000 employees across every level,” Nambiar said in a statement.
To reward employees in a more timely manner for their hard work and high performance, the company was moving to a quarterly promotion cycle for billable employees at the senior associate level and below from the second quarter of calendar year 2021, he added.
In addition, the company also paid the bonus to its employees in 2020 higher than that of last year despite the challenging year.
The company employs about 2.8 lakh employees, a majority of them in India.
This comes even as the company's attrition is high. Its attrition for the December quarter stood at 19 percent for the company, whereas some of its Indian peers reported low attrition rate during the period .
During an earnings call in February, Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said the market for skilled digital talent was intensely competitive, creating demand/supply imbalances for certain skills.
“This coupled with other factors including our more rigorous approach to merit-based promotions and salary adjustments have led to meaningful sequential increases in voluntary attrition,” he said.
The company has also reportedly put up $30 million for employee retention, according to a Times of India report.
The company expects the growth momentum to continue in 2021 and has robust hiring plans. “In fact, we’re on track to bring in more new hires in Q1 than ever before as we ramp our hiring capacity to accommodate our growth plans for 2021 and beyond,” Humphries said during the call.
