Mastek plans voluntary job cuts, to scale down staff benefits

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In order to maintain its profitability, the company said, it is creating a ‘virtual bench’, where an employee could remain for up to 12 months and would be given a monthly allowance.

Mumbai: Hit hard by the economic slowdown and a slump in demand, IT firm Mastek on Monday said it is offering voluntary separation and ‘forced breaks’ to its employees, and is also “aggressively” seeking to cut down on its staff benefit costs.
“Mastek had experienced a demand slowdown last quarter... the slowdown, in combination with reduced attrition level, has led to an excess bench buildup of around 425 professionals, a majority of them are trainees,” the company said in a regulatory filing.
In order to maintain its profitability, the company said, it is creating a ‘virtual bench’, where an employee could remain for up to 12 months and would be given a monthly allowance.
“These employees are also being offered the option to leave the company immediately with a compensation package if they chose to do so,” the company added.
“For people on the virtual bench, various international departments are working on plans to provide training and development programs to make this ‘forced break’ as valuable as possible.”
Mastek said it has also been taking various steps to reduce its operating expenses over the past few months and “plans to aggressively take additional steps that include reductions in travel expenditure and scaling down of other spending wherever possible.”
Noting these are “tough times” and market conditions were forcing them to take these steps, Mastek CMD Sudhakar Ram said, “My sincere intention is that we tide over this crisis at the earliest and get our virtual bench back on to engagements.”