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    HomeNewsBusinessCoronavirus impact | French BPO firm Teleperformance terminates 3,000 employees in India

    Coronavirus impact | French BPO firm Teleperformance terminates 3,000 employees in India

    Around 1.5 lakh employees in India's IT industry could lose their jobs over the next few months.

    Swathi Moorthy
    May 22, 2020 / 07:27 IST

    French business process outsourcing firm Teleperformance has laid off hundreds of employees in India as its business took a hit at the back of COVID-19.

    Harpreet Saluja, Founder & General Secretary - National Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), has said that Teleperformance employs more than 13,000 employees in India and of which close to 3,000 are being laid off from 21 cities.

    Saluja said that the company had filed a complaint with the labour commission and a notice had been sent to the company.

    An email sent to the company did not elicit any response till the time of publishing.

    In an email to employees, which Moneycontrol has seen, the company said, “COVID-19 has impacted all of us in different ways and so has it impacted our clients and therefore our organisation as well.”

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    The company explained that many of its clients had discontinued their services given the decline in demand. Others have asked the company to reduce staffing. There is also uncertainty regarding the future trends, the mail said.

    “This has meant that revenue from our organisation have significantly reduced and thus it cannot sustain the same costs and overheads,” it read.

    The company has also said in the mail that it is forced to take hard decisions in the interim, which includes termination of employees. The company is giving a 30-day salary in lieu of the notice period to the terminated employees.

    Teleperformance is not the first IT/ITeS company to terminate employees. Earlier Fareportal terminated more than 300 employees in March as the virus outbreak hit its businesses too. Fareportal’s major clients are in the airline and hospitality business, one of the worst hit because of COVID-19.

    More job losses

    According to hiring executives, more terminations are likely to follow as they brace for the worst as the virus outbreak intensifies. HR experts and industry players see around 1.5 lakh employees in India's IT industry lose their jobs over the next three-to-six months.

    Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services - a staffing firm - said in an earlier interaction that the majority of these layoffs will happen in small IT firms, which are dependent on a few large clients. Large and mid-tier IT firms will account for the rest.

    The industry employs about 45-50 lakh, of which smaller firms account for about 10-12 lakh. The top-five IT firms alone employ close to 10 lakh people.

    The probability of finding a new job is less as firms look to cut cost. Some companies would still be hiring for critical roles or niche skills. However for the majority of the unemployed, opportunities would be hard to come by. Hiring executives pointed out that the only way to get hired is through upskill yourself with skills that are in demand.
    Swathi Moorthy
    first published: May 22, 2020 07:27 am

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