The year seems to be worst for IT companies on hiring front too. Other than pinkslips, previous quarters also saw a plunge in hiring at all IT companies. In fact, the last quarter ended March 2009 saw most tech companies either reporting a decline in total number of employees or retaining the same number. Not even five IT companies reported a marginal increase in their total headcount during the quarter.

Here’s taking a stock of the total employee numbers at the leading IT companies in the past quarter: where the headcount remained same, where headcount declined and where headcount saw a marginal hike.

The company had 96,965 employees as of December 31, 2008. Pratik Kumar, head of human resources, said that the company won’t increase salaries in the current fiscal year.” On deferring the pay hike, Premji said this was being done to minimize expenses. During the third quarter of fiscal 2008-09, Wipro’s employee headcount in the IT services business went down by about 1,100 as compared to the earlier quarter.

Jaya Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, said, “The demand environment continues to be challenging in the short run, however, we are investing for portfolio expansion in all areas. Long-term growth prospects of the global delivery model are robust. We will see the benefits of our financial health in further enhancing sustainable differentiation of our strategy.”

The company ended the quarter with 457 fewer people on its rolls. However, the company said utilisation improved to 70 per cent, from 67 per cent.

This means that the company saw net reduction of 326 employees, down 5.8 per cent from the previous quarter. Hexaware has implemented a virtual bench programme for 250 of its employees as well as salary cuts for all senior and mid-level employees.

The company is cautious but optimistic about the hiring trend in the following two quarters. Says Deepak Chumble, Chief People Officer, “Hexaware’s headcount “will not go down drastically” in subsequent quarters.” The future is uncertain and there is a possibility the situation may not improve even in third or fourth quarter,” he added.

The identified employees could opt to be on the virtual bench or receive a severance pay and leave the company. An overwhelming 85 per cent opted to stay. Company’s HR head Kalpana Jaishankar said that it wasn’t that they were poor performers, this was a business issue and we wanted to make that clear.

As for what reason the company points — During the quarter ended March 2009, the company’s big domestic voice BPO project came to an end. So the company relieved 250 people working on the contract.

Ganesh Natarajan, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director, Zensar Technologies, feels that attrition levels in the industry have come down so drastically that one does not feel the need to hire.

However, Arun Jain, Chairman and CEO, Polaris Software Lab, said the company would be hiring at least 150-200 every quarter depending on the business need. Opting for just-in-time hiring, he said, Polaris does not recruit so many people.

According to Ramadorai, the company made 24,885 campus offers for 2009-10. The company added 48,595 employees in the year. As for attrition rate, Ajoy Mukherjee, vice president and head, global human resources, TCS, said, “The attrition rate is at 11.4 per cent. The utilisation rate (excluding trainees) has been maintained at 79.7 per cent, while the utilisation rate otherwise is lower at 69.4 per cent.”

The company expects to add only about 16,000-17,000 new net hires, about half the number in the previous year.

The total headcount of Infosys and its subsidiaries stood at 1,04,850 employees as on March 31, 2009. “During the quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries added 4,935 employees (gross). The net addition during the quarter was 1,772,” it stated. The company had close to 1,03,078 employees as of December 31, 2008.

Infosys Head, HRD and Education & Research TV Mohandas Pai said, “The year ahead would be challenging on the people front. Our continuous investment in capability development, training and certification would make us more competitive. We have tightened our performance management system to create a more focused workforce.”

The company said that it plans to hire a gross 18,000 employees in 2009/10 and there would be no job cuts despite the slowing outsourcing momentum.

The company plans to add another 250 by October this year. MindTree executive chairman Ashok Soota said, “Our new organisational structure and focus on new business areas will help us withstand the economic crisis and continue on our path to become a $1-billion organisation.”

With 5 jobs lost globally every minute, it is little surprising that the number is piling up in India too. However, the word `layoff’ still seems to be an `untouchable’ one for the industry. With majority of the companies linking the job cuts in their companies to `performance’.

Some other less popular terms being used for job cuts are right sizing, voluntary separation packages and workforce optimisation.

However, it is anyone’s guess that it is the global slowdown that is pinching these companies. Here’s a rundown on the job cuts at IT cos in India.

Mumbai-based TCS laid off most of its marketing team in London, plus a large number of professionals in the consulting division. According to sources, the targets were mainly the high-end consultants who are said to be an expensive lot to keep on the bench, and marketing.

Giving reasons for the layoffs in the UK office, TCS CEO & MD S Ramadorai said that either the contracts of these employees had ended, or can be due to bad performance. He added that going forward in the year, a lot of emphasis will be on employee efficiency.

Earlier, the IT major also accepted that it may go for further job cuts to tackle global economic downturn. The company also ruled out salary hikes this fiscal. TCS has frozen “lateral intake” and the company is reviewing variable pay component on employee salaries. Reports also suggest that the company is planning to increase its working hours by 10-15 per cent over the current 40-hour, five-day week cycle.

Country’s largest software company has also reportedly put its 1,000 employees under performance scanner. Last year, the company had asked 500 employees to leave after a similar performance improvement plan.

The subsidiary employs 360 people, a majority of them from Expert Information Services — the first acquisition Infosys Australia made six years ago.

Infosys board member and director for human resources Mohandas Pai confirmed that there were some separations from Infosys Australia. He said, “We have had an organisational restructuring in our Australia subsidiary and as a result, some positions have become redundant. It is the first time after the acquisition that this is being done.”

Earlier reports revealed that the company has put at least 5,000 employees or 5 per cent of its total global workforce under the performance scanner. Some 40-50 sales executives have also been reportedly asked to quit in the last two months. Most of these were located in the US and were from consulting background who are in a client-facing role.

The company has also plans to cut employee bonuses and compensation packages in the months ahead as the global meltdown strains its revenues. Infosys has also extended the period of training for people on the “bench” to 29 weeks from the present 16 weeks because of the ongoing global economic recession.

According to a HCL Technologies executive, the company had sacked 400 people in Delhi and another 50 in Bangalore in the last one-two months. The firm had earlier asked those on the bench to get assigned to projects or face the prospect of being asked to leave the firm.

Though the company didn’t confirm the number of people sacked but indicated that the move was linked to the performance of employees. According to company spokeswomen, “HCL follows a systematic process of performance review and development, and the expectation of the organisation is for employees to meet the stringent performance standards. This is a routine and ongoing process.”

Satyam’s global head of marketing and communication, T Hari said, “We are looking at rationalising employees who provide pre-and post-sales services onsite as part of the cost-rationalisation exercise.”

The support staff functions include HR and finance, besides pre- and post-sales services. The company sees support staff as non-billable employees, who need to be moved to billable roles in order to avert huge layoffs.

“But, given the current state of Satyam, trimming of sales force overseas is imminent. We have no plans either to take on board graduates who were offered jobs a year ago,” said Hari.

Earlier, fraud-hit Satyam had asked senior mangers to quit including Subu D Subramanian, global head of manufacturing and automotives division and Anil Kumar, a senior vice-president at Satyam’s financial services division. The company is likely to ask a number of its senior managers to quit as it looks to make the company a lean organisation before putting the company on the block.

The country’s fifth-largest exporter said that it was part of a routine appraisal exercise, carried out every year to weed out non-performers, and not related to any slowdown issues.

The company, however, claimed it to be an absolutely regular appraisal that is important for any performance-driven organisation. It said that it is something standard that Patni does every year.

Last month, Mastek announced that it is putting 425 employees on virtual bench for the next 12 months following a slowdown in demand. The company had given two days to the 425 employees on virtual bench, the option of leaving the organisation.

“Over 85 per cent of the 425 employees have chosen the option of the virtual bench. They will continue to be employees of the company and continue to receive a lower compensation for a period of 12 months,” a Mastek spokesperson said.

“We will be investing in training and supporting them during this period,” the spokesperson said. Mastek has an employee strength of 4,000 in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. Of the 425, half of them are trainees and the rest junior staff.

Employees on the virtual bench would be entitled to a monthly allowance. They would get 120% of their “fair severance compensation” spread over a period of 12 months, the spokesperson said. The company has said as soon as situation improves, people from virtual bench would be taken back. “As and when business situation improves we will bring them back from the virtual bench to full employment,” the spokesperson said.

The US mobile phone maker also confirmed that the India operations will also face job cuts as part of its plan to shed more than 3,000 global workforce. The company did not specify the number of employees to be given pink slip in the country.

According to Amit Chaudhery, communications and corporate affairs head of Motorola India, “The decision (to lay off) is an in-principle worldwide one, to be implemented while evaluating a variety of factors for each market.”

Recently, Motorola said it will cut 4,000 more jobs in 2009, in addition to 3,000 announced earlier. Most of the new layoffs will hit the mobile devices business, while about 1,000 jobs are tied to corporate functions and other business units.

The company reduced the notice period to 30 days from earlier 90 days which means the outgoing employees will get a month’s salary instead of three months. According to sources, such a method has been adopted to lay off employees.

Paris-based IT services and consultancy firm confirmed that its target of hiring 40,000 employees in India by the end of 2010 may not be possible, if the current slowdown continues.

Salil Parekh, the company’s India chairman, said that the total employee strength of the company in the country was around 20,000. The company might still be hiring but the rate has decreased compared to the previous year when the employee strength grew at 20 per cent. For the current year the company is expected to increase the employee strength by 14 to 15 per cent, which means the addition of around 3,000 employees.

The news report adds that the company may go for another round of lay offs soon. This round is likely to impact support staff from departments like marketing, human resources and sales.

In November last year, Sun Microsystems announced that it plans to cut as many as 6,000 jobs as the company tries to cope with plunging sales of server computers to financial firms, market-share losses to bigger competitors, and a spiraling stock price.

The reduction, which will eliminate as much as 18 per cent of the staff, will save $700 million to $800 million from annual expenses, Sun said in an e-mailed statement.

According to a report in Deccan Chronicle, employees of the company in Chennai, on condition of anonymity, said that they had an open-house meeting at their facility in Chennai with their chief people officer, Deependra L Chumble. At the meeting Chumble reportedly said that the company would be axing jobs and slashing salaries.

The report adds that Chumble said that those employees working at level G3 (staff with two years’ experience) and above will have a salary cut of 10-12 per cent. Quoting a team leader at Hexaware Chennai, the news article says that around 500 people are likely to be shown the door over the next three months. Hexaware, however, said that the company has not frozen salary hikes and appraisals.

The pink slips were in line with the company’s guidance given in October for the fourth quarter of 2008, which hinted at terminating the services of about 1,500 employees worldwide during the current quarter.

Company’s spokesman said, “Majority of those laid off were from Bangalore operations, while the rest were from Mumbai. The layoffs were based on two parameters — performance and business realignment.”

Interestingly, those who were sacked were given an attractive severance package and some of them were referred to other firms as part of its outplacement service.

According to a person familiar with the development, the company is implementing a procedure that reassesses skill sets of existing software programmers and developers. The move to conduct such a skill test, which evaluates the knowledge of programming languages and tools used by developers, for those working on projects raises questions since such tests are generally conducted at the time of recruitment.

An email questionnaire sent to Persistent Systems in this regard remained unanswered. When contacted, a company official declined to comment, saying the exercise was still in its initial phase and there were no substantial inputs to share.

Persistent employs over 4,000 across nine development centres in India and abroad. According to human resource experts, such a decision possibly points to a layoff in light of the downturn, which has resulted into a downward revision of IT budgets.

The over $100-million company, which has delivery centres in Noida, Nagpur and Pune, confirmed the layoffs but said the figure is 115. Over the last two years, Global-Logic reduced its headcount to 2,000 from 3,000. The company has also consolidated its verticals into three –B 2B, B2C and telecom–to reduce flab and overlap.

In another interesting twist, one of the co-founders and partner Rajul Garg has resigned from the executive management team as the HR head to pursue entrepreneurial activities ‘outside the company’. He now just has a position on the board. The company is now on a lookout for a new HR head.