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Reliance Retail to prune 600 support jobs
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Reliance Retail to prune 600 support jobs
11 Dec 2008:
AHMEDABAD/BANGALORE: Reliance Retail (RRL) is pruning its support service functions, possibly leading to about 600 job cuts, as India’s most
ambitious retail venture pauses on expansion, sources said.
Several senior expat executives, who were readying for the Christmas and year-end holidays, are now being told not to return, company and industry sources told ET.
This may well turn out to be the biggest mass layoff by an Indian retailer in what was touted as a sunrise sector which saw hiring in large numbers during the past few years.
Sources said the job cuts would cover support services like land acquisition, engineering procurement
, store design and facilities management, among others. RRL is expected to more than halve the strength of the support services function that currently has over 1,000 employees, sources said. These include staff on the rolls and on contract with RRL as well as its associate companies. The company will meet the contractual obligation of one month’s salary for expats and three months’ remuneration for Indian employees. But there will not be any severance package, a source said.
An email questionnaire to RRL remained unanswered.
“Most expats were going on Christmas vacation starting in the third week of December, but were asked not to report back to work in January. Their contracts were ending in December and in some cases in March next year,” a source involved with the developments told ET, requesting anonymity.
The employees who are being shown the door face a bleak job market, especially in the retail sector.
“To me, it’s more of a human story than one about layoffs,” a company insider said, adding that scaling down of business expansion left little scope for saving the jobs. It is believed that the pool of support services staff swelled as it absorbed those working with the petroleum retail rollout, which was put on hold earlier.
Sources said many support service executives have already knocked at the doors of companies like L&T for new assignment. One source said the ongoing job cuts were specific to the support services and do not cover the managerial staff deployed in operations across retail formats.
It is believed that separate HR reviews are underway for the company’s 18 retail formats, with some under-performing formats being told to cut expenses. The company had initially said that by the end of 2008 it would have over 1,000 stores across the country, but the numbers at present are a little over 800.
Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Services/Reliance_Reta
AHMEDABAD/BANGALORE: Reliance Retail (RRL) is pruning its support service functions, possibly leading to about 600 job cuts, as India’s most
ambitious retail venture pauses on expansion, sources said.
Several senior expat executives, who were readying for the Christmas and year-end holidays, are now being told not to return, company and industry sources told ET.
This may well turn out to be the biggest mass layoff by an Indian retailer in what was touted as a sunrise sector which saw hiring in large numbers during the past few years.
Sources said the job cuts would cover support services like land acquisition, engineering procurement
, store design and facilities management, among others. RRL is expected to more than halve the strength of the support services function that currently has over 1,000 employees, sources said. These include staff on the rolls and on contract with RRL as well as its associate companies. The company will meet the contractual obligation of one month’s salary for expats and three months’ remuneration for Indian employees. But there will not be any severance package, a source said.
An email questionnaire to RRL remained unanswered.
“Most expats were going on Christmas vacation starting in the third week of December, but were asked not to report back to work in January. Their contracts were ending in December and in some cases in March next year,” a source involved with the developments told ET, requesting anonymity.
The employees who are being shown the door face a bleak job market, especially in the retail sector.
“To me, it’s more of a human story than one about layoffs,” a company insider said, adding that scaling down of business expansion left little scope for saving the jobs. It is believed that the pool of support services staff swelled as it absorbed those working with the petroleum retail rollout, which was put on hold earlier.
Sources said many support service executives have already knocked at the doors of companies like L&T for new assignment. One source said the ongoing job cuts were specific to the support services and do not cover the managerial staff deployed in operations across retail formats.
It is believed that separate HR reviews are underway for the company’s 18 retail formats, with some under-performing formats being told to cut expenses. The company had initially said that by the end of 2008 it would have over 1,000 stores across the country, but the numbers at present are a little over 800.
Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Services/Reliance_Reta
