L&T Group Cuts 14,000 Jobs In Three Months
L&T cuts over 11% of its workforce in three months.
In the last three months, July - September 2016, India’s largest engineering and construction group Larsen and Toubro Group cut 14,000 jobs, amounting to 11 percent of its workforce.
R Shankar Raman, group chief financial officer attributed this massive manpower reduction to a strategic decision to reshape businesses that were under-performing.
Businesses which are not in shape, we are trying to right size (them). If we do believe that it is going to take some time for businesses to get back to normalcy, it is important we reduce the under recoveries. So we are redefining the roles and responsibilities which were found to be redundant.R Shankar Raman, Group CFO, L&T Group
Raman made this comment at a media conference held on Tuesday to announce Q2FY17 financial earnings for the group’s flagship company Larsen and Toubro Ltd. (L&T).
Adding that the job cuts were not concentrated in a specific business, Raman said that they were spread across sectors. However, the financial services sector had seen the maximum layoffs.
It is important that we stay agile and cost competitive in these tough times. So, we are also looking at corporate functions and all other initiatives.R Shankar Raman, Group CFO, L&T Group
SN Subrahmanyan, deputy managing director and president at L&T added that the job cuts were an effort to stay relevant.
We’ve got to look at it linearly, to see how to move up the value chain. Certain employees that were relevant at some point in time are not relevant anymore, the technology is changing. We have put many of our works into shared services and we have brought in back-up services for many of our works. And we are moving into some amount of automation and digital for some of our common services. The verticalization process has resulted in a different way of looking at processes. There are certain low performers which we were taking along and we had to take a relook at it because in a competitive world we need to be agile and smart and move forward.SN Subrahmanyan, Deputy Managing Director and President, L&T
Subrahmanyan added that the lay-offs were a one-time occurrence and not a recurring exercise.
It’s not a continuous action we are doing. We took it and that’s the end of it.SN Subrahmanyan, Deputy Managing Director and President, L&T