As per report IT major Cognizant has reportedly laid off 200 senior employees with a severance payout of 3-4 months. Meanwhile these employees are mainly from the director level and above. Reportedly this exercise took place through July and was completed in August. Furthermore as per the report, the IT major also offered a voluntary separation scheme to 400 senior employees last year and the program this year was not voluntary.
Furthermore employees who were laid off were asked to sign a release agreement, which stated that they acknowledge that no legal action will be taken against the company or its directors or its officers. Meanwhile in fact, the layoffs were reported on August 3 that Cognizant said it would look at cutting senior level jobs, because of which the company would incur as much as $35 million in severance costs.
Moreover at the time, Raj Mehta, president at Cognizant, told ET in an
interview that this layoff, which unline last year isn’t voluntary, is targeted
towards senior executives, which would allow its associates to grow. Hence with
digitalization and emerging technologies coming into play, the IT industry has
been seeing layoffs over the past year or two and there were media reports last
year that a staggering 56,000 techies could be fired.
