Cognizant losses 10,500 employees during the April-June quarter, as part of its strategy to reduce costs and fund investments for growth
Amid COVID-19 crisis, IT major Cognizant has recently announced its results for the April-June quarter, and they revealed that the company’s headcount had reduced by 10,500 people in the quarter.
While in the previous quarter b/w Jan – March 2020, Cognizant had 2,91,700 employees globally, which now stands at 2,81,200 (as of June 30). The decline of 10,500 sequentially.
Cognizant CEO said that the voluntary attrition (employees resigning on their own) stood at 10.5 percent, speaking to investors during the earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Brian Humphries said that the company will be focused on performance orientation in the company when it comes to employees, “which means that we are now removing the underperformers on an annual basis.”
As reported by Times Now, last year in October 2019, Cognizant had said that it put in place a cost reduction plan ‘Fit for Growth’ as part of which it will be removing 10,000 to 12,000 mid-to-senior level associates from their current roles. Of these, the company said 5,000 associates would be re-skilled and redeployed, resulting in around 5,000-7,000 employees eventually losing their jobs in the coming quarters.
Also during the earning calls for Q2 results, CEO Brian stated that net headcount declined approximately 2.5 percent year-over-year including the roughly 7,000 associates exited under the Fit for Growth plan.
Looking into results, Cognizant said that the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain in light of the pandemic. For the full year 2020, Cognizant expects revenue to decline in the range of 2 percent to down 0.5 percent year-over-year in constant currency.
Cognizant, which announced its Q2 results on Wednesday, also announced that its Chief Financial Officer Karen McLoughlin resigned after more than eight years as CFO and 17 years at the company. Karen will be replaced by Jan Siegmund as the CFO starting September 1, 2020.
