Snapdeal puts 200 employees on notice
Company gives chosen employees an option of improving performance within a month or face termination
Virtual marketplace, Snapdeal, has put 200 employees on a performance improvement plan (PIP), prompting a slew of resignations.
While Snapdeal refused to officially discuss the issue, company sources claimed to Forbes India that this is not a case of correcting “over-hiring” but simply part of an “ongoing performance management and development programme”. The company aggressively hired employees in the last few years taking its total staff strength from under 500 in 2012 to over 7,000 employees till January this year.
The human resources department broke the news to the chosen employees on Tuesday giving them an option of improving performance within a month or face termination. Most employees are choosing to exit the company instead of meeting “85 percent customer satisfaction score”, as has been specified by the company.
“There have been no layoffs at Snapdeal,” a statement attributed to the company spokesperson said. “While many team members have opted for this opportunity to improve the requisite skills set, some team members have desired not to undertake the PIP and have instead decided to move on voluntarily,” the statement said corroborating the news of employees leaving the company.
Snapdeal has already outsourced much of its customer service to Concentrix in Bangalore, Competent Synergies in Mohali and Firstsource Solutions in Mumbai.
The company source also confirmed to Forbes India that there was no hiring freeze and the online marketplace was in fact still hiring people. The official however, declined to divulge whether they were hiring customer service executives or technology engineers. Over 1,000 engineers have joined the company in the last year to ramp up technology and backend. “Our team of nearly 8,000 continues steadfast in its pursuit of building India’s most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem,” the company said.
