Monday, March 09 2009 02:09 PM
Inside the neo-modern building of a Bangalore outsourcing company, thousands of workers go through an unusual exercise each week.
As they arrive at work, they must pass a clipboard full of newspaper cuttings enumerating job losses at outsourcing and technology companies in the city. MphasiS axes 200 in Bangalore, says one. Sun Microsystems lays off 150, Sapient cuts 300 and so on.
The company's strategy is having a curious impact on employees. As measured by company executives who do not want the firm's identity to be disclosed, workers are performing better, making less demands of the company and appearing to value their jobs more highly than before the clipboard went up.
The chilling effect of the economic downturn is being felt all over Bangalore, India's outsourcing hub. Companies and workers are refashioning their strategy to face the reality of an intense downturn.
For the outsourcing industry's young workforce, long used to double-digit annual pay hikes and job hops at will, this reality is especially hard. After many years of industry growth on steroids, Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani told me in a recent interview, many young workers had been lulled into a feeling that that was normalcy.
Workers are now recalibrating themselves to demonstrate higher productivity and greater loyalty to their employers. They are not taking their jobs for granted, nor are they assuming the subsidized lunches at the café or the free buses to work will last forever.
More:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/business/0,39051970,62051686,00.htm
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