Anand Mahindra, top bosses apologise as employee told to quit within 24 hours

Mahindra Groups’s chairman Anand Mahindra tendered a public apology over the manner in which an employee of Tech Mahindra was asked to quit. Mahindra, chief of the $19 billion group, took to social media to apologise over the incident on Friday saying the core value of the conglomerate is to “preserve the dignity of the individual”:

I want to add my personal apology. Our core value is to preserve the dignity of the individual & we'll ensure this does not happen in future https://t.co/yBxAxvFZlc

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) July 7, 2017

Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani also took to social media to tender an apology:

I deeply regret the way the HR rep & employee discussion was done. We have taken the right steps to ensure it doesn’t repeat in the future. pic.twitter.com/KKLt6tIBb6

— CP Gurnani (@C_P_Gurnani) July 7, 2017

India Today reported that the employee was asked to resign as part of the company’s cost optimisation and restructuring plans. The employee was told to quit by 10 am the next day (Friday). The report mentioned that this incident went viral since a sound clip of the employee’s exit interview was uploaded to SoundCloud on Thursday. According to Moneycontrol, in the recording, a human resources executive can be heard asking the employee to resign as his resignation was part of a “corporate decision”. The HR executive said: “Cost optimisation is happening at the company and your name is part of that list. If you can put in papers we will be treating it as a normal exit with June 15 as last working day, if not, we will be sending you a termination letter.” [caption id=“attachment_3790863” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Anand Mahindra. Reuters[/caption] The employee attempts to reason out his resignation on such short notice, by telling the HR executive about his good performance in the past and lack of options ahead of him. However, the executive tells him that “as part of the offer letter signed by all employees at the time of joining, the company reserves all rights to let the associates go whenever it wants, with the basic salary,” as reported by Moneycontrol. According to CNN-News 18, vice-chairman of Tech Mahindra, Vineet Nayyar said in a note: “We have become aware of the incident involving a conversation between an employee and a company HR representative. We deeply regret the manner in which the discussion took place and have taken necessary corrective steps to ensure that this does not happen again in future.” India Today stated that the incident comes at a time when the IT job market in India is apparently crashing. IT firms in India are reportedly in the midst of one of the largest job cuts ever witnessed. The number of layoffs in 2017 is set to be twice that of last year. Inability to deal with US president Donald Trump’s nationalist-protectionist policies have further led to job cuts. Even more challenges are faced as acquiring work permits has been stricter in countries like the US, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, as reported by PTI. PTI also reported that Wipro had asked about 600 employees to leave as part of its annual “performance appraisal” earlier this year. Deccan Herald reported that “Contrary to media reports of 56,000 IT professionals to lose jobs this year, the actual job cuts will be between 1.75 lakh and 2 lakh per year in next three years, due to under- preparedness in adapting to newer technologies.”