Top outsourcing firms buck trend, dole out big bonuses
NEW DELHI: Indian industry may be taking the knife to salaries and putting bonuses in deep freeze, but that hasn’t deterred some top outsourcing firms from announcing higher-than-usual bonuses to employees, rewarding them for achieving steep targets in difficult market conditions.
The country’s largest BPOs, NYSE-listed Genpact and WNS Holdings and Nasdaq-listed ExlService Holdings, have said that they will cap an excellent year, that saw them improving their profitability, by giving out higher bonuses compared with last year.
Genpact, which has about 36,200 employees globally, has given bonuses ‘slightly higher than last year’, president & CEO Pramod Bhasin said. “Last year was a very good one. So, we had a reasonable employee bonus this year,” he added. Genpact’s net income more than doubled to $125.1 million in 2008, while revenues increased 26% to $1.04 billion. The firm was benefited by increased business flow from existing clients and measures taken to cut costs.
Similarly, EXL managed to meet 95% of its performance targets, despite unfavourable headwinds, president and CEO Rohit Kapoor said. The firm’s revenues grew 19.5% in 2008, a year in which it added 23 new clients and brought down employee attrition.
In 2008, some businesses of EXL performed exceptionally well, such as the transformation services that grew 38%. People who contributed therein were given higher bonuses, while bonus payouts were lower in other businesses, Mr Kapoor said.
Another senior EXL executive, who asked not to be named, said bonuses were 15-20% higher at the BPO firm this year compared with last year. He said the company, which benefited from reduced general and administrative expenses, used some of its cash to pay bonuses.
