Before the global slowdown, India’s ITservices companies constantly worried about attrition rates and often loweredthe bar on performance as a result. Over the past year, though, the new term is“downsizing” — shrinking the employee base so that employee costs match slowerbusiness growth. This fiscal, as the recession in the western markets startbiting, their tolerance for non-performers is down to zero.

India’s second-largest IT servicescompany, Infosys, for instance, officially announced putting around 2,100non-performers under the scanner after the end of its annual performance cycle.India’s leading IT services company TCS, too, admitted to telling 1,100employees to pull up their socks or perish. Now, Bangalore-headquartered Wipro,which derives a majority of its revenue from IT-BPO services, announced that itput close to 7 per cent of its employees in the list of non-performers in FY09against 2 to 3 per cent in the previous fiscal. This has affected almost 3,000employees who have already been released from their jobs, said officials.

“For FY09, we probably have seen 5 to 7 per cent of our manpower employed withthe IT business being released, against 2 to 3 per cent a year back,” clarifiedGirish Paranjpe, joint CEO of Wipro’s IT business. Admitting that performancecriteria have now become more stringent than they used to be, he added: “It isalso as a result of the slowing economy.”

“Performance management tools have been always used by companies to reward goodperformers and weed out the bad ones. However, due to the significant growthover the last few years, they were not enforced. With the industry facing theeconomic downturn, it is using this tool fairly effectively. And it is beingdone all over the world,” explained Som Mittal, president of software bodyNasscom.

The scanner is not restricted to large-cap IT firms. HCL Technologies is a casein point. Although the exact number of people who were asked to leave thecompany is not known, the company had dismissed about 450 people in Delhi andBangalore for non-performance. The company is also reportedly asking the benchresources to take a salary cut of 25 per cent or find projects from within thecompany, failing which they will be asked to leave. Patni Computer Systems,too, is understood to have asked close to 500 people last year to leave.

Infosys HR Head TV Mohandas Pai dubs the industry’s unwillingness toaccommodate unproductive staff “zero tolerance for non-performers”. Companiesare also not willing to give such employees extra time to improve. “Typically,we allow such people to improve,” said S (Kris) Gopalakrishna, CEO and MD ofInfosys Technologies, adding: “But owing to the challenges and cost pressures,we cannot afford to let them remain in the company.”