Cognizant cuts bench time, puts lay off pressure on employees

Amid the layoff pressure going around in the IT sector, Cognizant has put further pressure on its employees as it has cut the bench time from 60 days to only 35 days, reports The Times Of India.

People who are not on billable projects are on bench and they are allowed to select the project they would like to work on. Now due to the shorter time, people who are not willing to relocate or move to other domain will have to either pick up the given project or leave the company.

The exiting procedure will take another 60 to 90 days. “The interventions for those on the bench will kick in early and they have no choice but to show flexibility of relocating or refreshing their skillsets in newer technologies. Companies have become less tolerant to those on the bench. A steep learning curve and the pressure to upskill with shifts in technology cycles is only accelerating the process,” said a senior employee who was laid off reports TOI.

Earlier Cognizant said it will remove 10,000 to 12,000 employees and reskill 5000. They had 288K employees as of June 30, 2019. The companies are trying to right-size the pyramid during the layoff while make it cost effective.