DESPITE a revival in business, some of the biggest companies, including Reliance Industries, State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, ACC and Century Textiles, saw a drop in their headcount of employees in 2009-10.
Of the 181 companies that have filed their annual reports, in more than a third, 69 to be precise, the headcount dropped by 19,478, according to data provider Dataline. Despite this, however, the 181 companies together had 62,696 more on their rolls on March 31 this year than a year earlier.
Among companies that reported a staff contraction, SBI's was the sharpest at 5,597. Reliance was next with a drop of 1,314. The SBI data were a surprise, because it had announced during the year plans to hire 11,000 new hands.
Instead, its count went down be cause, as one of its officials explained, a large number of employees retired and only a 10th of the planned hiring could be fulfilled.
The official said that normally up to 7,000 employees retired every year from the bank. Presumably, that was the number that superannuated last year too. In contrast, only about 1,000 proba tionary officers were hired. The entire year saw no recruitment of clerical staff. Another large bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB), also reported a drop -of 1,277.
The overall addition of 62,696 on the rolls of the 181 companies is nothing much to write home about, when one takes into account the addition by the IT giants -Tata Consultancy Services (16,668), Wipro (10,261), Tech Mahindra (8,552), Infosys (6,837) and Mphasis (4,729). These four alone added 40,210 employees.
In other words, the remaining 177 companies added only 22,486. Not quite a significant number in a year of resurgence.
State Bank of India and PNB may have been exceptions, because other banks were adding to their rolls.
For example, Bank of Baroda added 2,122, IDBI Bank 2,012 and Dhanlaxmi Bank 1,873.
Gautam Ghosh, a Delhibased HR consultant, said companies were still cautious about hiring, though recruitment had picked up lately. "You notice a hiring momentum in IT, insurance and healthcare. In information technology, companies resumed recruitment halted during the economic slowdown," he said.
According to Achyut Menon, founder of Options Executive Search, a recruitment firm, there has been aggressive hiring by most sectors, except energy and retail. Companies in the education sector were now hiring in large numbers, he said.
Ghosh added that recruitments last year were generally for positions at the top and entry levels, more or less bypassing the middle rungs. He thought it would take some more time for middle management hiring to pick up.
"Companies recruit managers at the top level for strategic reasons, and they also need a lot of employees at the entry level for execution. The latter do not necessarily put pressure on the company's bottom line," he said.
Among other firms that saw declines are Thermax (1,121), Patni Computer (899), HDFC Bank (799), ACC (641), Bata India (519), Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar (389), Century Textiles (384), Balrampur Chini (325) and ABB (274). Ghosh said he expected the auto and infrastructure sectors to see more recruitment in the coming quarters.
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