The Automotive Black Box Data Dilemma

After a car crash—, which was staged by engineers at Toyota Motor Company’s Kaikan Museum and exhibition hall in Toyota, Japan—data stored in the module that controls the deployment of the airbags reveals how fast the vehicles were traveling as well as other details about how they were being driven before impact.

Built into the framework of U.S. citizens’ civil liberties is the right to privacy. Though not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, privacy is cherished as a catchall concept that limits government intrusion into people’s lives and establishes boundaries meant to protect one citizen from another. But the framers of the Constitution could not have foreseen the electronic systems that now threaten to modify the definition of privacy or abolish it entirely.

Automobile safety systems, which are networked throughout the body of your car, generate a blizzard of data (likely without your knowledge) and store it in a nondescript box the size of a deck of cards. The gadget, called an event data recorder (EDR), is a less-refined version of the so-called black box carried by aircraft. Initially, EDRs were supposed to help researchers and automakers make refinements to the systems intended to keep cars from crashing and people from dying. But it wasn’t long before these devices were eyed as tools to help authorities figure out what a driver was doing in the moments before a crash—be it eating, shaving, or gargling with vodka. (Before EDRs, drawing such conclusions required autopsies and a series of educated guesses based on things like skid marks.)

What’s more, new standards regarding the performance of automotive black boxes and guidelines for retrieving data after a crash  are set to go into effect in the next several months, raising privacy issues and setting up a clash between law enforcement and privacy advocates that could be fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court is already grappling with unprecedented cases involving the freedom from search and seizure provided by the Fourth Amendment and the privilege against self-incrimination provided by the Fifth Amendment.

In January, the Supreme Court ruled in a similar case— United States v. Jones —which involved digital monitoring of a driver’s behavior. In that case, police secretly planted a GPS tracking device on a suspected drug dealer’s car and monitored his whereabouts for 28 days. The high court ruled that the evidence obtained using the device could not be used against the suspect because the police failed to obtain a warrant. At a minimum, the court ruled, placing the tracker represented an illegal trespass.

Technology is sure to play an ever greater role in courtroom drama, especially as it relates to the sharing of digital data. But in contrast to the United States v. Jonescase, the focus will be on electronic devices that are already in place when you drive your car off the dealer’s lot.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 85 percent of new vehicles come equipped with black boxes. Still, the average driver has no idea that in the event of a crash, data stored in the box details how the car was being driven in the moments before impact.

Although black boxes are not mandatory by NHTSA rules, starting with 2013 models, EDRs must keep a record of 15 discrete variables in the seconds before a crash. Among them are the car’s speed, how far the accelerator was pressed, the engine revolutions per minute, whether the driver hit the brakes, whether the driver was wearing a safety belt, and how long it took for the airbags to deploy. A black box must also stand up to the initial impact so that it can capture data for at least two more hits in a multievent crash, such as when two moving vehicles collide and one bounces off, sideswipes a parked car, and then slams into a tree.

Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org

iGate Delays Joining Dates for New Hires by 2 Quarters

Nearly a month after Infosys said it had delayed its fresher on-boarding plan, instability in the economic environment and a possible slowdown in client spending have forced another IT services firm to postpone its fresher joining dates. California-headquarted iGate, which has a majority of its staff in India and employs around 30,000 people, said out of the 3,000 campus offers it made across India, joining dates of around 1,000 engineers will be delayed by one, or possibly, two quarters.
“The overall demand environment remains weak. Close to 1,000 freshers, who were expected to join in July-August, will now join by the end of September or October,” said Srinivas Kandula, HR head at iGate. “If the economic situation worsens, we will have to delay it by another quarter,” he said. iGate’s decision comes amid slowing growth for India’s software companies, which depend on the US and Europe for over 80% of its revenues. Last month, country’s second-largest IT firm Infosys had said it would delay the joining dates of over 25,000 engineers it hired from campuses to as late as mid 2013, a sign of how IT companies are coping with project delays and weak economic sentiments in the US and Europe.
“The economic environment may force companies to rethink. Based on the macroeconomic situation, we will decide when to dispatch appointment letters,” Kandula added. Close to 1.5 lakh campus offers were made by the top 10 IT firms through campus placements during August-September period last year. These top 10 firms account for roughly 70% of the offers, according to experts. TCS has made offers to over 43,000 freshers this year. Wipro, the country’s third-largest software exporter, said it does not disclose campus hire figures.
“Companies are very cautious and Tier-1 firms are still deciding whether to go ahead with the original schedule. Delay in joining dates could be anywhere between 9 and 12 months,” said Amitabh Das, CEO of recruitment firm Vati Consulting. Das, however, said compared to the 2008 recession, when top tech firms trimmed their campus intakes and tightened salary hikes, the hiring scene right now is much better.
IT firms plan campus hiring based on the expected demand for IT services and project flows. In 2010, top tech firms hired two lakh employees, with Infosys alone hiring close to 40,000 campus recruits. Last year, TCS hired roughly 40,000 freshers, Cognizant 28,000 and HCL over 6,000. According to leading recruiters, some of the large IT firms, which stagger joining dates of freshers across the four quarters of the year, are taking fewer freshers on board in the current quarter than they originally envisaged. They are postponing joining dates for the rest.
“The way companies admit campus recruits in different batches is expected to change. A company that typically admits 10,000 freshers in the first quarter, may now cut it short by 5,000,” said C Mahalingam, executive VP and chief people officer of Symphony Service, a mid-tier firm outsourced product development firm that competes with firms such as iGate and other Indian IT providers.
However, placement heads at two well-known engineering colleges said they were yet to hear about any possible delay in fresher hiring. HCL Technologies and Wipro said there has been no change in their schedule. Globally, over the past one year, job growth in fields like software development and testing has been slow.
Engineering graduates who received their job offers at campus placements in August-September last year should typically start receiving their joining letters during this period.

Source: Times of India

Wipro chairman Azim Premji takes a pay cut, but TK Kurien gets five-fold hike, Delhi

IT giant Wipro’s chairman and managing director Azim Premji saw his remuneration falling by nearly one-third to 1.9 crore last fiscal, but the group’s IT business CEO TK Kurien’s pay package grew over five times to 4.5 crore.

As CMD of Wipro Ltd, whose main area of business is information technology, but is also present in certain consumer goods businesses, Premji’s annual remuneration declined from 2.8 crore in the fiscal 2010-11 to 1.9 crore in the latest fiscal ended March 31, 2012. During the same period, the total remuneration rose from 80 lakh to 4.5 crore for Kurien, who assumed the role of Wipro’s IT business CEO in February 2011.

However, the salaries paid to Kurien’s predecessors – Suresh Vaswani and Girish S Paranjape, who were joint CEOs of Wipro’s IT business till January 2011 – were much higher. During 2010-11, Vaswani was paid 10.2 crore (up from 3.1 crore in the previous year), while Paranjape’s remuneration stood at 8.9 crore that year (up from 2 crore in 2009-10).

Along with Premji, Wipro’s chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty also saw his pay package take a dip in the fiscal 2011-12, shows the company’s latest annual report being sent to the shareholders ahead of their AGM later this month. Senapaty’s remuneration fell to 1.8 crore in 2011-12, from 4.3 crore in the previous fiscal.

The total remuneration paid to all the key management personnel of the company fell to 8.7 crore in 2011-12, from 27.5 crore in the previous year. However, Wipro’s total employee wage bill, including salaries, bonuses and other staff payments, rose to 15,400 crore from 12,700 crore.

Premji’s remuneration had fallen even more sharply in 2010-11, as his pay package had dipped by nearly two-third from 8.1 crore in the year 2009-10.

Azim Premji’s son Rishad Premji, currently the chief strategy officer of IT business, was paid 50 lakh in 2010-11 (up from 40 lakh in the previous year), but the annual report for 2011-12 does not mention his salary for the year.

As per the annual report, Rishad holds about 6.87 lakh Wipro shares (worth about 28 crore currently, while Azim Premji holds more than 9.3 crore shares (worth 3,700 crore) in his name. Azim Premji’s pay package in 2011-12 included 30 lakh as salary, 13.1 lakh in allowances, about 1.1 crore as commissions/incentives, nearly 16 lakh as other annual compensation and 26 lakh in deferred benefits.

Source: The Economic Times

The first day at your new job

On your first day it would not be uncommon for nerves to get the better of you, making you say the wrong thing or for you to feel completely overwhelmed with all the new information that is thrown at you.

To avoid scenes like this the trick is to look and stay calm, even if on the inside you feel like a blubbering mess, look and listen more than you talk, and ensure that you are prepared and ready for your first day at work.

Plan your route

The best way to deal with any new situation is to plan for any eventualities and to be prepared. In this instance, this means planning your route to work beforehand, working out how much time you will need to get there and to leave enough time just in case the train is late or there is a lot of traffic. It’s a good idea to do a test drive the week before so that you know what to expect.

What to wear on the first day of work

Plan what you are going to wear and make sure that your outfit is washed, ironed and ready to put on.  You will have got a feel for your new company’s dress code when you went for the interview and so you should try to dress similarly at first, so that you don’t stand out.
If you are unsure, it is always best to dress slightly more conservatively than you usually would. Once you have been there a while and then you can start to show what a quirky sense of fashion you have, but not before.  Wear something that you feel comfortable in and that you know looks good. If you feel comfortable, you will look comfortable and ooze confidence.

Morning routine

Ensure that you go to bed early the night before so that you wake up with plenty of energy and are raring to go.  Make sure that you have enough time in the morning to carry out your daily routine, as rushing around like a madman will only add extra pressure. Shower and wash your hair, clean your teeth and make sure that you look and smell good!

Make time for a proper breakfast that will last you until lunchtime without causing hunger pangs or loss of energy mid-morning. Take a packed lunch to work with you just in case you do get hungry or in case your workplace does not have its own canteen. Additionally, in some offices, lunch is often just a quick sandwich at your desk rather than a leisurely lunch at the nearest bistro.

Your big entrance

Walking into an unfamiliar workplace and being confronted with a whole group of new faces is daunting. If you keep calm, put a smile on your face and stand up tall, people won’t bat an eyelid. Ensure that you are friendly to everyone that you meet and make eye contact when talking to them.

You will more than likely be taken on a tour of the building, so introduce yourself and explain which position you will be taking and ask people their names and what their role is in the company. If you have time later, draw up a map or plan of your office, filling in peoples’ names and roles until you get to know this information off by heart.

Although it’s always good to ask questions, on your first day keep questions to a minimum. Make notes throughout the day of anything that you would like clarification on and ask your boss all in one go at the end of the first week if they haven’t already been answered by that time. Too many questions could make others perceive you as annoying, thick or false.

Your workplace

You probably won’t be given that much to do on your first day, but be aware that your new colleagues may be up to their neck in work. Be friendly and try to make conversation but realise that the others may be busy, have a tight deadline to work to or a project to finish. Give them space and they will respect that and probably offer their help when they have more time. Don’t take this as a personal affront, especially on your first day.

If you find yourself with a lot of spare time, organise your working space and get a feel for the new building such as finding out where the toilets and coffee machine are! In an office environment you will most likely have to set up a new email address, voicemail message and find your way around a new computer and intranet system.

At the end of the day, do not rush out of the door. Try to stay behind and finish off any jobs or if you are invited for a drink after work with your boss or other colleagues, ensure that you go. This will give you the opportunity to find out more about the written and unwritten rules of the company and will make you appear friendly and eager to fit in. Once the first day is over and done with, the rest of the week, month and year will be a doddle!

Source: www.helpwithjobs.co.uk

First-Day Paperwork for New Employees: Understand What You’re Signing

New employees may have to sign a number of documents before starting work.

Many new employees– especially those first entering the workforce — are surprised at the mountain of paperwork that greets them on their first day. What’s in that pile? Some tax-related forms, some forms the government requires for other reasons, some benefits forms, and probably some forms your employer has generated for its own use. Most first-day paperwork is routine, but there are a few things you should watch out for. This article explains the most common forms for new employees.

Tax Forms

You will be asked to complete and sign IRS Form W-4: Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate. This lets your new employer know your tax filing status, how many allowances you are claiming, and how much to withhold from each paycheck. Many states have similar forms for state income taxes.

Other Government Forms

In addition to tax forms, there are other government forms you will be asked to sign when you start work. The federally required forms are:

• USCIS Form I-9: Employment Eligibility Verification Form. You must complete the first part of this form, which is used to ensure that you are legally authorized to work in the United States — and that you are who you say you are. You will also have to provide documentation proving your identity and work status, such as a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate. Your employer may make copies of these documents, but must return the originals to you.
• New Hire Reporting Form. This form requires you to provide basic identifying information about yourself, which the state government will use to determine whether you owe child support.

Some states may require additional forms.

Benefits Forms

If your new employer offers benefits, you will have to sign enrollment forms. You may have to provide information about family members, choose among various plan options, and designate beneficiaries (for example, if you sign up for life insurance or a retirement plan).

Other Forms

Your employer may have additional forms it wants you to sign. Many employer-generated forms are routine. For example, many employers ask employees to complete forms naming an emergency contact, providing identifying information for the vehicle they will be parking in the company lot, or giving the routing numbers and other banking information necessary to process a direct deposit request.

Some employers, however, ask new employees to sign forms that affect their legal rights. Although you may decide to sign these forms anyway (in fact, you may have to sign them as a condition of employment), you should fully understand what you are agreeing to. Let’s take a closer look at some of these forms.

At-will agreement. Many employers ask new employees to sign a statement acknowledging that they are employed at will: that is, that they can be fired at any time, for any reason. You may have already signed such a statement as part of the application process. If not, however, and if you were led to believe that you would have job security or could be fired only for good cause, you should think carefully before signing this type of agreement. For more information on at-will agreements and when you might want to think twice about signing one

Noncompete agreement. Some employers ask new employees to sign a noncompete agreement, in which the employee promises not to start a competing business or go to work for a competitor after leaving the current employer. These agreements are not legal in every state. Even where they are legal, they must be reasonable, which is usually interpreted as limited in terms of time period, geographic area, and number or type of competitors they cover. If you are presented with a noncompete agreement, you may want to talk to a lawyer to make sure that it’s legal — and find out whether you should try to limit its application (for example, so that it is effective only if you quit your job, not if you are fired).

Nondisclosure agreement. A nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is a contract in which you promise not to reveal the company’s confidential information. An employer may ask you to sign one if you will receive, for example, confidential customer lists, formulas for products, or manufacturing specifications to do your work. If you are asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement, read it carefully and make sure you understand the terms, including which information is considered confidential, how you should handle that information, and what penalties you might face if you breach the agreement.

Nonsolicitation agreement. In a nonsolicitation agreement, you agree not to solicit the company’s customers and/or its employees to a competing venture once you are no longer working for the company. Are you bringing customers or clients to your new employer? If so, you might want to try to exclude those people (or some of them, such as your friends and family members) from the nonsolicitation agreement. You should also make sure that the agreement prohibits only solicitation, not customers or employees who voluntarily follow you out the door. This is another area where it might make sense to talk to a lawyer before you sign.

Arbitration agreement. A typical arbitration agreement requires you to give up your right to file an employment-related lawsuit against your employer (for wrongful termination, discrimination, or violation of wage and hour laws, for example) and instead bring any disputes to arbitration. Arbitration is a private proceeding, which typically provides limited rights to gather and present evidence and no (or very limited) rights to appeal the arbitrator’s decision. If you are asked to sign an arbitration agreement, it’s a good idea to ask for a lawyer’s advice on whether you should sign and how to ensure that the agreement is fair.

Source: http://www.nolo.com

Job offers dry up as economy faces the heat

A sharp deceleration in hiring  by companies in the first quarter of this financial year has pushed the job market to an 18-month low, according to senior executives from Manpower India, Randstad, TeamLease, GlobalHunt and Futurestep, all leading hiring and staffing consultants. But the worst is yet to come, they warn, forecasting that hiring could shrink by another 2-5% next quarter. Some companies have started revising their manpower requirements downwards, they add.

A crippling combination of factors ranging from the rupee’s fall, global economic turmoil, a volatile stock market, policy paralysis, poor growth numbers and lack of investments has conspired to weaken corporate sentiment this quarter, leading to poor hiring.

“Hiring demand from clients has come down by as much as 30% when compared to 2011,” says Sanjay Pandit, MD, Manpower India, a staffing and placement firm.

“This is the worst we have seen in last six quarters,” adds Randstad MD & CEO E Balaji.

Hiring, which had peaked in March-April 2011, has since been on a roller coaster and has now hit the rock bottom. “The job market is at an 18-month low,” says Asim Handa, MD (India) for Futurestep, a Korn/Ferry company.

Another top executive at a leading placement firm says on the condition of anonymity that some companies have already started revising manpower requirements downwards. “This was not the case even in April,” he says.

“Everybody is waiting to see where the situation is headed…the current quarter is the worst in the past one-and-a-half years,” says Sangeeta Lala, senior VP, TeamLease Services.

Job market watchers say a number of factors will determine hiring next quarter: the monsoon, the state of the European markets and, of course, the state of the economy. “At best though, it will be similar to this quarter’s trends, a muted kind of growth. On the other hand, if the overall situation doesn’t improve, it can decline another 3-4% from here,” says Balaji.

Early this month, when Manpower released its quarterly employment survey, the 5,000-odd employers across industries and sectors that it spoke to maintained an optimistic outlook.

“But while the outlook and intention is there, whatever has been happening in terms of uncertainty regarding the monsoon or rupee’s decline, can have an impact on this sentiment,” Pandit says. He is, however, hopeful that since the Indian economy is still largely driven by domestic consumption, the country may see a slowdown in jobs but not a large-scale impact on hiring outlook.

“It doesn’t look good, be it across metros or even tier-II or tier-III cities. No industry is really looking to ramp up numbers; it’s mostly replacement hiring that is happening. We are expecting hiring to go down 2-5% from present levels,” says Lala of TeamLease Services.

“Right now, we are seeing the lowest point of the past six quarters. We expect the hiring outlook for the next quarter to be moderate,” says Sunil Goel, director, GlobalHunt.

Manish Sabharwal, chairman, TeamLease Services, lists out three imminent possibilities that could send the job market into a tailspin. “One, if there is a major blowout in Europe, companies in India will react; two, if interest rates go up further, eating into the margins; and three, a new non-reformer finance minister will dent the confidence of companies in India,” says Sabharwal.

Source: The Economic Times

Select hiring keeps job market alive

Amid the overall cautious market, there are sectors that are still hiring, with a slew of companies going ahead with their plans to add more people on board. It’s a mixed bag with sectors such as manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, private equity and ecommerce looking to hire fresh talent, but others such as IT, ITeS, banking, financial services, telecom and retail going painfully slow in their hiring, say job market watchers.

Among the laggards are banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), IT and BPO. “These have mostly been affected by the global economy, especially in case of the last two, which are dependent primarily on work from abroad,” says Sangeeta Lala, senior VP, TeamLease Services.

BFSI is in trouble because besides the economic crisis, credit lending has gone down and foreign banks in particular have slowed down expansion plans, says Sunil Goel, director, GlobalHunt.

Telecom is bearing the brunt of poor policies and retail hiring has been impacted by lower buying power of the people, he adds. However, in terms of volumes, the ones leading the pack are manufacturing, engineering,real estate and hospitality. Pharmaceutical, healthcare, and life sciences are also staying ahead of the curve. “This is based on the demand as well as the fact that these sectors are relatively recessionproof. In countries like India, you need a lot of medical attention,” says E Balaji, MD and CEO, Randstad India.

“Demand is high for senior executives in areas such clinical research, medical diagnostics, hospitals and research & development activities,” says Tejinder Pal Singh, life science partner, Transearch International, a search firm. “Since a lot of such talent is in the West, companies prefer to hire people of Indian origin to head their research activities in India,” he adds.

A spokesperson for the pharmaceuticals major Ranbaxy says the company’s recruitment for 2012 is on track and aligned with the company’s overall growth plans. “We expect to attract the talent that we require for our business plans,” the spokesperson said. Auto major Maruthi Suzuki is cautious, but plans to add about 1,900 to its workforce this fiscal. The number includes campus recruits (management trainees), graduate engineers, laterals at junior and middle management levels, diploma engineers, shop-floor technicians and experienced professionals. The company’s chief operating officer (administration) S Y Siddiqui, sounds a note of caution.

“It is quite possible that the hiring plans may get affected due to the sluggish market demand,” he says. Other sectors that are still hiring include private equity, e-commerce and non-conventional renewal energy. “PE players are chasing good ventures to invest in and e-commerce is seeing a huge growth,” says Balaji. FMCG and consumer durable companies such as Samsung, Dabur and Pepsi-Co are hiring in select functions. Samsung is planning to hire in its B2B and retail (sales & marketing) divisions, according to VP-corporate HR Sanjay Bali. It will also add 45% more manpower in its R&D centres in Bangalore and Noida. The existing R&D manpower consists of about 6,000 people.

Dabur India plans to add about 400 people in its sales & distribution function, besides hiring for its three facilities set up in the last one year. Two of these are in Himachal Pradesh and one in Uttaranchal. “Although we are careful about hiring as we don’t want to go overboard. We will hire about 70 people across these three units,” said Dabur India EDHR A Sudhakar. The company had recruited only eight management trainees from various B-schools this year, compared to 16 last year.

“This number has come down primarily because the attrition rate has dropped at this level. Since the telecom and BFSI sectors are not doing too well, the talent that would earlier shift to these sectors has now stopped doing so,” he added. PepsiCo India too has gone ahead with its plans to hire for 2012. The company’s chief people officer Samik Basu said: “As of now, it’s business as usual for us. It would be too early to say if hiring will get impacted in the coming months. We have not put any freeze on hiring.”

The company has already achieved its hiring target for 2012 and will prepare its hiring strategy for 2013 in September and October. It hired 18 management trainees from B-schools this year.

A similar number was hired last year as well. Another sector that has remained slowdown-proof is education. Education solutions provider Educomp Solutions plans to hire about 1,500 people this fiscal. Says MS Venkatesh, president-group HR & people’s solutions group: The GDP growth does not have much impact on our business,” he added. The company had more than 16,500 employees as on March 2012.

Source: The Economic Times

MNCs to cut 71,000 jobs globally, including HP, Nokia and Sony

A whopping 71,000 job cuts have been announced worldwide by more than a dozen multinationals, including HP and Nokia, so far this year as they attempt to save costs amid uncertain economic environment.

The cuts have been announced by companies from various sectors, during the first six months of 2012, and those from the technology services space are the worst hit.

Companies to have confirmed massive job cuts, running into thousands of employees each, include tech giant Hewlett- Packard (HP), mobile handset maker Nokia, consumer electronic giant Sony Corp, internet company Yahoo, food and beverage maker PepsiCo, financial services entity Royal Bank of Scotland and airline firm Lufthansa.

Camera maker Olympus, Swedish ball bearing giant SKF AB, drug manufacturer Novartis AG, the Anglo-Dutch firm Unilever, computer mouse maker Logitech International, LM Wind Power and mobile network operator Verizon Wireless have also announced substantial job cuts.

Together, these companies have announced job cuts totaling 71,000 in their operations across the world. Incidentally, more than half of the job cuts have been announced in May alone.

Restructuring programme

Individually, the Anglo-Dutch food and cosmetics giant Unilever last week said it plans to cut 500 jobs in Britain as part of a restructuring programme. In addition, it would also see some posts outsourced to India.

In the same week, Nokia said it plans to reduce its workforce by about 10,000 people worldwide by the end of 2013 as the struggling company fights strong competition. The measure is aimed at additional cost savings of 1.6 billion euros (about US$2 billion) by the end of next year.

SKF also said it would slash around 400 jobs in Germany as part of cost cutting measures due to weakening business sentiment in India, China and European countries.

Announcing the job cuts earlier this month, Logitech International said it would eliminate approximately 450 positions, or 13 per cent of its worldwide workforce in a bid to save US$80 million in annual operating costs.

Olympus Corp, which employs over 40,000 employees globally, this month said it would axe 2,700 jobs worldwide, or seven per cent of its workforce, in the next two years. The move is part of the company’s effort to boost its profitability.

In May, HP said it would layoff about 27,000 employees globally over the next two years as part of restructuring move to stem up declining profits and revenues.
The tech firm said workforce reduction would generate an annual savings in the range of US$3-3.5 billion by the end of the 2014 fiscal year.

German carrier Lufthansa, which reported a loss of 379 million euros (US$479 million) in the first three months of 2012, had last month said it would cut 3,500 administrative jobs worldwide in the coming years as part of cost cutting measures.

In the same month, wind turbine blades manufacturer LM Wind Power announced plans to trim its workforce by 180 employees in the US. There were also reports last month that mobile network operator Verizon Wireless plans to cut its workforce by around 180 people in the US.

The embattled smart phone manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) also said in May that it would layoff a large number of employees this year, without specifying any number.

Electronics behemoth Sony, which has been battling years of profit losses, in April had said it will slash 10,000 jobs. Besides, the company said it would slim down its TV line in an effort to right its ailing business.

Troubled internet company Yahoo, which has nearly 14,000 employee, in April announced it would lay off 2,000 employees as part of a savings plan. The move would save USD 375 million in a year for the company.

The company has been struggling to increase its share in the internet market amid tough competition from Google and Facebook.

In February, PepsiCo said would cut 8,700 jobs globally as part of a programme to save up to US$1.5 billion by 2014 to offset high commodity costs and increased spending on advertising and marketing. Early this year, Novartis announced plans to cut 1,960 jobs in the US in a bid to curtailed the expenses.

Source: Deccan Herald

Indian CEOs more optimistic on talent availability

Notwithstanding concerns over skill shortage, Indian CEOs are more optimistic about talent availability and short-term growth prospects than their global peers, says a survey.

Management consultancy PwC’s survey found that Indian CEOs were less concerned about the availability of talent and were willing to invest in training and development.

“Indian CEOs were also more optimistic about talent availability and short-term growth prospects as compared to their global peers,” PwC said.

As many as 66 per cent of CEOs in India were very confident about having access to talent whereas globally only 30 per cent respondents felt the same way. The survey covered 1,258 CEOs across 60 countries and included 76 from India.

About 76 per cent of Indian CEOs were willing to take the onus of providing training for the available talent.

“While it is heartening to note that Indian CEO’s have expressed high confidence in their ability to find talent, it appears that they may be underestimating the extent of this challenge today,” PwC India Executive Director (Consulting) Padmaja Alaganandan said.

As per the survey, 88 per cent CEOs in India were willing to invest in improving the overall living and working conditions of the workforce compared to 55 per cent globally.

“Globally, CEOs are still positive about India and have ranked the country as the fourth most favourable nation for overall growth prospects in the next 12 months, just behind China, the US and Brazil. CEOs in India, in particular, are optimistic about their companies’ growth prospects,” Alaganandan noted.

On the other hand, globally CEOs admitted that they were unable to pursue a market opportunity due to challenges in getting the right talent.

“In India, 41 per cent of CEO’s cancelled or delayed a key strategic initiative owing to skills shortage as against 24 per cent globally,” the survey said.

Source: www.deccanherald.com

Innovation at work