Accenture gives bonuses to a large part of its staff

The payouts have been made over the past few weeks to more than half its 2,00,000 employees in India across technology and business process management centres, multiple sources said.

Mumbai: Global IT and professional services company Accenture has paid out bonuses and given promotion to a large section of its India workforce.

The pay-outs have been made over the past few weeks to more than half its 2,00,000 employees in India across technology and business process management centres, multiple sources said.

“As part of our ongoing compensation programmes, we have recently recognised a number of our people with bonuses and promotions,” a spokesperson said in response to ET’s query. However, Accenture did not specifically respond to a question on how many people benefited from the bonus pay-out.

Accenture is one of the largest employers in the IT sector, hiring an average about 2,500 people every month in India in the last one year.

The IT sector is one of the largest employers in the country, with close to 45 lakh employees and handing out more than 20,000 job offers every month. According to industry body Nasscom, the industry hired 205,000 new employees in fiscal year ended March 2020.

Earlier, ET had reported that Accenture in India had decided to honour job offers made to new hires. “Accenture is honouring all offers made so far, and associated benefits are effective from the date of joining,” Lakshmi C, managing director and lead, human resources, at Accenture India had told ET.

Accenture’s decision about bonus and promotions comes at a time when several leading industry peers have deferred or suspended pay hikes and promotions.

“Wipro has deferred pay hikes and promotions,” said a company spokesperson. “Wipro can confirm that it will honour all offer letters made to candidates. We will continue to hire laterally for critical roles,” said the spokesperson.

Infosys had announced last month its decision to suspend promotions and salary increments. “For now we have suspended any promotions or increments for the year as the situation evolves and obviously we are not looking at furloughs, but we are also looking at many other initiatives to bring cost under control,” chief operating officer Pravin Rao had said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings conference. The company refused to comment on an ET query about bonus pay-out.

At Tech Mahindra, the top and senior management has taken significant cuts in variable pay for the ongoing first quarter of fiscal 2021. “This is to ensure that the variable payout/bonus of our majority employees at the junior level is paid as per applicable policy,” chief people officer Harshvendra Soin said. “Our decisions are aimed at ensuring the well-being of our associates,” he added.

Capgemini paid variable and bonuses to all its employees in March. The French IT major also gave increments and promotions to all junior professionals effective April 1, which covered more than 70% of the employees, India chief HR officer Pallavi Tyagi said. “For the rest, we are going ahead from July 1,” she said.