IT Major Cognizant plans to lay off at least 7,000 mid-senior level employees over the next few quarters.
The company has also announced it would exit the content moderation business for clients such as Facebook and Google – a move that will affect another 6,000 jobs. The decision comes after a few investigations raised questions about the working environment of such moderators and the impact of the work on their mental health.
Cognizant in a post-earnings conference call with the analysts, said it would remove 10,000-12,000 mid-to-senior employees from their current roles, and resell and redeploy about 5,000 those impacted, according to a news report in India Today.
“With the layoffs, the company said it expects to save between $500 million in 2021 and record restructuring charges worth $150-200 million by the end of next year“
Last month in September, it was reported that the Cognizant Technology Services’ planning to hire 500 sales executives to ramp up digital technology-based services. Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said that the company would reap the benefits of the new hires in the next few quarters, although most are expected to come from companies with niche skills.
In August this year, the company looked at another round of layoffs as part of its strategy to cut costs and reduce spending. It was reported that the company is undergoing a widespread restructuring under its new CEO Brain Humphries.
Cognizant had 288,200 staff as of June 30, 2019, up 7 percent from 268,900 a year earlier and 2,81,600 at the end of 2018. Out of this 1,94,700 or, nearly 64 percent were in India, the company said in its annual report for 2018.
