Undermining the central bank’s independence is a recipe for disaster, and Viral Acharya, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India proved this with his comments recently. According to a press release by RBI’s employee union, Acharya’s sharp observations and outburst at a recent lecture in Mumbai were not surprising, and have rightly created a flutter across the nation. Acharya had raised concerns on the central bank’s independence being put at risk. The Government has been pressurising RBI on issues ranging from easing Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) norms on weaker banks to setting up a Payment Regulatory Board, outside the central bank.…
Author: HRK News Bureau
Companies which are providing food facilities to their employees will now come under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Act. Kerala Appellate Authority for Advance Ruling (AAAR) observed that the supply of food items in the canteens run by the appellant company will come under the definition of ‘supply’ and hence, will be taxable under the GST Act. Canteens will be charged at rates similar to hotel food, that is five per cent under GST. AAAR pronounced the decision while considering a plea from Caltech Polymers in Malappuram. The Company submitted an inquiry about whether recovering the food expenses from…
After going on mass casual leave, government employees in Haryana will now go on a two-day strike on October 30 and 31, in support of Haryana Roadways workers. The strike is against the hiring of 720 buses by the State Government for the Haryana Roadways fleet on kilometre basis. Employees see this as an attempt to privatise the public service. All employee unions have joined hands to support the Haryana Roadways employees against privatisation. Employees of all government departments, boards, corporations, universities and municipalities will participate in the strike. There are about 2.6 lakh regular government employees apart from about…
Microsoft will continue to lend support to the Defense Department, as part of which it will also sell software to the US military, even while its staff is doubtful about how ethical it would be to provide cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that may result in violence and conflicts across the globe. Employees disapprove of company software being used for warfare or policing or anything that goes against the interest of the minorities. Recently, employees have protested Microsoft’s deals aimed at giving a push to military capabilities, surveillance, immigration restrictions and tracking of suspects and criminals. Accepting the importance…
According to the data released by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), 91 lakh workers seem to have dropped out of EPFO last year. Although 18.5 lakh registered again, the number of workers who seem to have dropped out has touched almost 70 lakh. This can be an indication of erosion of formal employment. However, concrete reasons for this drop-out are not known yet. Deeper and more thorough study will be needed to arrive at the same. As per EPFO records, almost 1.5 crore new accounts were opened in September–August 2018. However, it cannot necessarily be taken as an indication…
This year’s gift of 600 cars to his employees had brought diamond merchant, Savjibhai Dholakia into the limelight yet again for his grand gestures. He had handed over the keys to the cars, each costing over Rs 4 lakhs, to the diamond artists and engineers of his company, Hari Krishna Exports. The cost of the cars itself was said to be about Rs 27 crore in total. However, it is now reported that these cars were not truly ‘gifted’. Some reports say that every month a specific sum will be deducted from the salaries of the employees as part of…
ABB, the Swiss industrial robots and robot systems manufacturing company, will be setting up a new factory at Shanghai, at an expected cost of $150 million. The factory, according to Reuters, will come up in China’s robotics campus and is expected to begin operations in two years. It will not only make robots for China but will also export robots to other countries in Asia. ABB’s industrial robots are in great demand globally as they are efficient in building automobiles and assembling electronic devices. The Company employs over 2000 workers in robot manufacturing alone, in China. ABB has ignored the…
A one-day strike was planned across the country by 28000 contractual staff of the National Health Mission (NHM), who have been demanding salaries on par with the permanent staff. In Karnataka, however, all contractual workers in the State’s health department across all districts went on strike for a day. District Health Officers have issued notices stating that all contractual and outsourced staff that joined the strike will be considered as absent for work that day, and no leave will be allowed to any permanent medical and paramedical staff. There are about 22,000 staff members in NHM comprising doctors and nurses.…
Rahul Bhatia, co-founder and interim CEO, Indigo, has asked the staff in an official e-mail to help bring down costs considering the poor financial performance of the Airline in September. While Bhatia clearly stated his disappointment, he also assured the staff that the situation will improve very soon. Indigo’s parent company, InterGlobe Aviation, reported a quarterly loss of Rs 6.521 billion last month, for the first time ever since its listing two years back. Bhatia urged the employees to adopt cost-reduction tactics while ensuring that customers are offered courteous and smooth services. While business is usually slow during this time…
HCL Technologies, the IT services firm, is expected to recruit close to 30000 people as it anticipates more work in the near future. It will be hiring more full-stack engineers instead of concentrating on specialists in one development lifecycle, as was the practice in the past. However, it will decrease its dependency on H1B visas with more focus on hiring locals in the US. According to Apparao V.V., chief human resources officer, HCL Tech, the Company requires a minimum of 25000 people to help maintain its current growth rate. Having added 3,754 people in the second quarter, its staff strength…
Zoho announced a major update to its HR management system, Zoho People 4.0. This new version has significantly enhanced the core functionality of the application, providing employers with a centralised, integrated system that facilitates better connectivity between HR and employees. It allows HR departments to manage custom services, tailor complex leave policies to specific workplace scenarios, run advanced analytics, and handle employee queries through a centralised case-management system. “Over the past decade, Zoho People has enabled HR departments across the globe to manage attendance, leave, performance, documents and forms from a single platform,” said Raja Ramasamy, product manager for Zoho…
Sixty thousand employees may lose their jobs in the telecom sector by the start of 2019, as a result of consolidation activities, which are forcing operators, infrastructure providers, tower companies and associated retail units to optimise their staffing. However, companies are looking to hire in areas, such as artificial intelligence and big data. The telecom industry may let off people working in the customer support and financial functions department. These two segments are expected to let go of about 8,000 and 7,000 employees, respectively. Job losses are expected to ease as the industry stabilises and the sector will now focus…
Wipro’s business process outsourcing (BPO) services division will now have an additional business line, which will offer end-to-end human resource (HR) solutions and services. The Company had struck a ten-year deal worth $1.6 billion with Alight Solutions, the US-based HR and financial solutions provider as part of which it had taken over the operations of Alight HR Services India a few months back. With the latter’s operations being integrated with Wipro’s, the new business unit will be counted amongst the largest players in the HR space. As part of the deal, Wipro was also required to effectively implement the digital…
PeopleStrong, Indian HR technology and solutions company, now has Josh Bersin, global HR tech thought leader as part of its board of directors, as an independent director. Bersin, a popular public speaker and renowned research analyst, is the founder of Bersin by Deloitte, which offers research-based membership programmes in human resources (HR), talent and learning. Josh writes on topics pertaining to corporate human resources, talent management, recruiting, leadership, technology, and work–life. He offers his advice to many HR and learning companies to facilitate the alignment of their products and services toward the needs of corporate buyers. “We are excited to…
The demands of lakhs of teachers and other government employees of Uttar Pradesh for removal of pay disparities has been accepted. According to the secretary of the State Employee’s Joint Council, SP Tiwari and General Secretary RK Nigam the finance department is expected to take steps to remove pay disparity next month, following which the salary of the employees may go up to Rs 5,000. The differences in the salaries of the employees had widened after the sixth and seventh pay commissions had been implemented. A salary committee was constituted to investigate the 7th Pay Commission demands of the employees,…
Ten automotive labs will be set up in India as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). This collaboration will help promote skill development amongst youth across the country. As per the agreement, Honda will provide all the relevant tools and equipment required by these 10 learning centres under NSDC, at Kolkata, Guwahati, Ranchi, Patna, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Vijayawada, Dehradun, Varanasi and Cuttack, which will enable skill development. Honda will also facilitate the establishment of a platform for students practising trade-specific skills on various facets of…
Japanese wedding organising company, Crazy, is going out of the way to ensure that its employees get a good night’s sleep and become more productive. It is rewarding the employees who sleep for a minimum of six hours every night, for at least five days a week, with points. The employees can exchange these points for 64000 yen worth of food from the cafeteria every year. An app launched by a mattress manufacturer will track the nightly rest. According to a survey by a health-products manufacturer, over 92 per cent of Japanese in their twenties and above are said to…
India has been witness to significant progress in terms of vocational training, skilling and education in the last few years. The recent approval by the Union Cabinet of the merger of the National Council for Vocational Training (NCVT) and the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) to give rise to the National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) is yet another step in that direction. NCVET will be dedicated to monitoring and regulating the standard so as to ensure accountability and a focussed approach. Industrial training institutes (ITIs), polytechnics and government schemes, such as DDU-GKY, PMKVY, UDAAN, NSQF-RMSA have been…
As per the order of the Ministry of Communications, Department of Telecommunications, Shashi Prakash Gupta will assume charge as director, HR, Indian Telephone Industries (ITI), from October 15, 2018. Gupta has over three decades of rich experience in different areas of personnel and administration, business excellence and CSR in two integrated steel plants and their respective corporate offices. He has been instrumental in formulating and implementing various HR policies to facilitate a productive work culture at the Steel Authority of India (SAIL). Prior to joining ITI, the state-owned manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in India, he has successfully headed industrial engineering…
Laszlo Bock, who headed people operations at Google till 2016, is now focusing on his own start-up called Humu, co-founded with two other ex-Google staffers. Humu is a software that blends behavioural science and machine learning to help managers and employees bring about changes in their behaviour. The software provides time-based alerts that encourage the managers to find out from their team what they need, what their weekend plans are, and so on. It encourages meaningful interaction that goes on to have a positive impact on productivity and workplace culture. Based on behavioural economist, Richard Thaler’s popular ‘nudge theory’, Humu…
Jet Airways, which is facing the worst financial crisis ever, will pay 25 per cent of the September salary to its senior managers, pilots and engineers on 25 October. However, the Airline has not said when the remaining salary will be disbursed. The 16000 strong workforce of Jet Airways has been dealing with irregular and delayed salary disbursement for quite some time now. In an official communication, Rahul Taneja, chief people officer, Jet Airways assured that the Company is doing everything possible to ensure that the remaining amount is paid to the employees as soon as possible, but no date…
Expecting a rise in demand, Infosys, the Indian multinational business consulting, technology and outsourcing services provider, is going to keep up its hiring process. Although it did not specify the exact number of graduates it intends to recruit, it has made its intention to hire very clear and known. This augurs well for the IT sector, which has witnessed a noticeable reduction in campus hiring. Growth has been slow for IT companies in the past few years. Infosys itself experienced high attrition in the last three quarters. The second quarter witnessed 22.2 per cent attrition whereas the first quarter suffered…
After spending more than five years with IBM, Kanisha Raina has joined Fiserv as director, human resources. At IBM the last post she held was that of talent leader, India/South Asia. Fiserv, an American company that has made a name in the financial technology space, caters to over 12000 clients across the globe and has a staff strength of 24,000 employees. It offers solutions for mobile and online banking, payments, risk management, data analytics and core account processing. Raina’s experience with IBM included shouldering the responsibility of being talent partner-research, cloud, commerce, security, analytics and systems, from 2015 to 2016.…
The Government has hiked the interest rate for General Provident Fund (GPF) and other schemes, to eight per cent for the last quarter. This is good news for those who work for the Central Government, railways and defence forces. This increase of 0.4 per cent comes just when Diwali is around the corner. In September, the Government had increased the interest on small savings, including NSC and PPF by 0.4 per cent for the October-December quarter. The aim was to align the interest rates with rising deposit rates in the bank. Only government employees can be members of the General…
Skillsoft, the technology company that specialises in corporate learning, has entered into a strategic partnership with ITProTV and Loonycorn, to deliver hundreds of additional hours of IT-related courses and certification training to Skillsoft customers. This will enhance Skillsoft’s vast technology and developer content portfolio. Loonycorn is a video production studio that specialises in creating e-learning content on emerging and complex technologies. ITProTV is an online membership platform addressing the global IT skills gap by delivering binge-worthy learning™ to train IT professionals through their careers. With rapid advancements in technology, chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) require on-demand…
Chief operation officer (COO) Jayant Krishna and chief programming officer (CPO) Vishal Sharma of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) have quit, at a time when the Skill India initiative seems still far away from achieving its target for 2022. The NSDC, which is a public-private partnership (PPP) under the Ministry of Skill Development is leading the Skill India Mission, which is chasing a target of skilling 400 million people in the next four years. In 2015, Dilip Chenoy, CEO, NSDC and Atul Bhatnagar, COO, NSDC had quit following a report submitted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) that…