News: Indiabulls Group asks nearly 2,000 employees to step down

Employee Relations

Indiabulls Group asks nearly 2,000 employees to step down

The Group shared that this move is part of the annual attrition cycle and claimed these were not layoffs.
Indiabulls Group asks nearly 2,000 employees to step down

Another company to join the league of layoffs is diversified financial services group Indiabulls Group, which has asked 2,000 of its employees to leave. However, these layoffs are not the result of COVID-19 impact but part of the annual attrition cycle. The group even claims that these are not layoffs but a regular exercise that comes with its annual attrition cycle. While businesses across sectors have asked a percentage of its employees to leave, this is the first major event of layoffs in the financial services sector.

Further, the move comes just a month after Indiabulls said that its senior management had taken a 35% pay cut for fiscal 2021 as part of efforts to control expenses. 

"The company typically sees an attrition of 10-15 percent of its workforce every year during April-May in the normal course of business. This year we waited till we got clarity from the Supreme Court and MHA. There are no layoffs other than in the normal course of business due to attrition and as per the performance trend of the entire year and not just a couple of months," Indiabulls Group said in a statement

The group employs more than 26,000 people and in the fiscal 2019-20 itself, it added more than 7,000 new members, the statement said.

As per the report, some employees of the group's housing finance arm Indiabulls Housing Finance claimed that they were asked to resign from the company by their reporting manager on May 15, 2020, with their last working day as May 31, 2020. As per some tweets on Twitter, these calls were done over Whatsapp. The social media outpouring by the employees is streaming on Twitter with the hashtag #IndiabullsResign and many employees have posted on the platform hinting that this move is not just part of annual attrition cycle. 

"Few days back I was ensured that my job is secured and only my salary will be deducted by approx 30 percent, but now they force us to self resign over WhatsApp call without any clarification or any notice period. When I asked about reasons behind that, they said we didn't have any work so we have to cut short the manpower. But in Media they said it was part of annual attrition cycle, which is not true. If it was annual attrition then why have they asked us to self resign over WhatsApp call which can't be recorded," shared one of the impacted employees in an email note with People Matters. 

Recently, in a story, we had mentioned that measures such as layoffs, furloughs, and freezing benefits and raises all have an impact on both corporate and employer brands, but how these actions are perceived will depend on the way they are executed and communicated. Layoffs often result in employees’ broken trust, increased burnout and decreased morale. Hence, companies need to understand how to manage the process of workforce reduction to attain its benefits while avoiding its ancillary costs. And in today’s day and age with so much presence of social media, employers' brand image is also at greater risk. 

Different businesses are experiencing the ongoing uncertainty in fundamentally different ways and the leaders better know whether layoffs will be critical for their business continuity programs or not. However, there are some points leaders should think before carrying out a layoff. You can read more about them in this story: How not to layoff during the COVID-19 crisis

Image Credits: National Herald

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Topics: Employee Relations, #Layoffs

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