Get rid of 3-month notice period: Techies ask govt to ease quitting process

Single-digit hikes in the coming financial year, low job mobility plague sector's employees

The government should make it easier for IT professionals, who are expecting single-digit hikes in the coming financial year, to exit their jobs, an online petition signed by over 28,000 professionals has demanded, reported The Economic Times on Thursday.  

Their complaint? The three-month non-negotiable notice period that most IT firms hold their employees to. According to the report, the petition said, "It is unrealistic for anyone to plan that far ahead for their future actions and resign in advance not knowing state of the issue in next three months." The petition has been addressed to the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment. 

Speaking to the financial daily, an IT professional, who did not want to be named, said that no company would be willing to wait for three months while their new employee serves out his or her period at their old firm. Further, the report said that Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies, Capgemini, Accenture and IBM had a three-month notice period in place. 

Growing pains

Indian companies are likely to provide single digit increments to their employees in 2017, across industries, an Aon Hewitt survey said recently. “The survey projects a drop in pay increases to an average of 9.5 per cent across industries. While it’s a marginal decrease from the 2016 (10.5 per cent) spends, it reflects maturity that India Inc has displayed amid global and Indian economic and political events. This includes recent changes in the US government and the much-talked demonetisation,” the report said. Aon Hewitt, the global talent, retirement and health business of Aon plc, conducted its 21st annual survey after speaking to more than 1,000 companies. (Read more) 

The Indian IT sector, and its employees, will not escape this predicament either. According to ET, Tech Mahindra has already suspended the salary revision process for employees with more than six years of experience, pending a management review. 

The petition comes at a time when the IT sector is gearing for a shake up. As reported earlier, Indian IT services players may have to re-skill significant chunks of their workforce to drive the digital technology transformation. A report from global advisory firm McKinsey & Company, which was presented at the Nasscom India Leadership Forum last month, said that nearly half of the workforce in the IT services firms would become “irrelevant” over the next three-four years. (Read more) 

Further, digital disruption is not the only thing worrying the industry. Last month, industry body Nasscom unexpectedly postponed issuing a growth projection for 2017-18, a first in 25 years, in the wake of uncertainty due to regulatory changes in the US and the macroeconomic outlook. (Read more) 

Recruitment across the sector has already felt the pinch. As reported earlier, the Indian technology services sector is facing its worst growth period in close to a decade as they see clients reducing budgets on traditional outsourcing work, which is not being offset by growth in newer areas such as digital and cloud. In addition, routine maintenance work of customer applications or IT infrastructure, where freshers are normally deployed, have been taken over by automation or robots. (Read more) 

Further, Nasscom recently said that both freshers and employees of the software services industry should look at self-learning to stay relevant at a time when more businesses are focusing on digitisation. (Read more)