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Increments and perks may again be stabilizing, but companies are raising variable components to keep salary bills under check
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Over a third of all employees say jobloads increased during the year. In all, 31% also say they feel higher stress at work
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More people complain of falling morale this time around than in earlier surveys. MNC development centers in India seem less effected, though
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The recession began with HP announcing a fall in PC sales in November 2000.
Since then, we have sought to chart out the effects of recession on the HR
environment of companies in India in every HR survey. The first DQ-IDC survey in
August 2001 managed to capture but a scent of how things were changing within
companies as employees answered with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. By the time
of the second survey in August 2002, the effects were startlingly clear—64%
said salary increments had been reduced, 52% said perks had been cut back and 43
% complained of increased job loads.
This August, we asked the question again and got a similarly revealing
result. As the recession seems to recede, the overt effects on the HR
environment also seem to be subsiding. The problems haven’t disappeared
altogether. They weren’t expected to. But they seem to be coming under
control. For instance, compared to 2002, only 49% IT employees this year said
salary increments had been affected, only 31% complained of a cut in perks and
34% of increased job loads. These aren’t great numbers, but they’re better
than last year.
That was the good news.
The bad news is that despite the overt signs of improvement, there are
currents of insecurity and dissatisfaction that have only grown during the year.
More employees said morale was down this year (21%) compared to 18% the year
before. And despite the return of the hiring season, the sense of job insecurity
had actually increased a bit, with a marginally larger population (36%) saying
their jobs weren’t secure, compared to last year’s 34%.
That said though, there was no sign that Indian companies had been effected
more or less than the multinationals or that there was a difference in the way
employees of small companies felt the effects compared to those in larger ones.
In that sense, there was a certain justice in the whole scenario—everyone was
painted by the same brush. The only other clear trend was that while fewer
people complained of increment cuts, a lot more said companies had reduced
employee cost to company, most often by changing the composition of variable and
fixed salaries.
Here’s how the recession effected the HR environment in the industry and at
specific companies over the last year.
