After Cognizant, now Infosys is laying off over 10,000 middle, senior level executives

Infosys, India’s second-largest IT major,  is laying off over 10,000 of its mid, senior-level executives, said a report in Times of India. Infosys, like Cognizant, is laying off people, and in a similar fashion – a targetted move to reduce some of the perceived fat, particularly in the middle and top, and flatten the organisation, the report said. Shares of the Banglore-based company on Tuesday fell 1.86 percent to Rs 695.80 on the BSE. Last week, US-based Cognizant announced plans to slash up to 7,000 jobs in the next few months as part of cost-reduction efforts, PTI had reported. [caption id=“attachment_7547121” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Besides, the US-based company – which has around two lakh employees in India – would partially exit from content operations business and the move would impact another 6,000 jobs. Cognizant’s total headcount stood at 2,89,900 at the end of September. The company did not provide details about the geographies where the jobs would be impacted. Since India accounts for the biggest share of the company’s staff, the impact of these layoffs is expected to be significant. Cognizant will remove about 10,000-12,000 mid-to-senior level associates worldwide from their current roles in the coming quarters. This would include a net reduction of about 5,000 to 7,000 roles (about 2 percent of its total head count) and re-skilling and redeployment of about 5,000 of the total associates impacted. “We expect the remaining 5,000-7,000 associates to exit the company by mid-2020 either through attrition or role elimination,” Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin had said during an earnings call. Another 6,000 roles will be impacted by Cognizant’s decision to exit a subset of its content operations business. “… our work is largely focused on determining whether certain content violates client’s standards and can involve objectionable materials. We’ve determined that this subset of work is not in-line with our strategic vision for the company,” Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries had said. He noted that the company would work with partners to explore ways to transition these roles to alternative vendors, thereby reducing the impact on the associates and also reducing any associated charge. “While we intend to exit this work, we recognise the cleansing, the web of objectionable content is a worthy cause and one in which companies have a role to play. “For this reason, we have decided to allocate $5 million to fund research aimed at increasing the level of sophistication of algorithms and automation, thereby reducing users exposure to objectionable content,” he had said. The optimisation of cost structure is expected to result in total charges of approximately $150-200 million, primarily related to severance and facility exit costs. The move is expected to result in an annualised gross savings run rate of approximately $500-550 million in year 2021, the company had said.   (With PTI inputs)