New Delhi: A total of 200 employees at e-commerce major Snapdeal have a sword hanging over their heads with the company issuing them a one-month deadline to either improve or be ready to face termination from the company. The move appears to have stemmed from rising competition from rivals like Amazon and Flipkart.
The company has issued the 200 employees with a performance improvement notice for a month. “The PIP process is expected to cover about 200 team members. As part of the on-going performance management and development programme, some team members at our contact centre have been offered a performance improvement plan (PIP),” a Snapdeal spokesperson said.
Under the PIP, employees have been given 30 days to improve performance, and failure to improve will result in termination of services. While most employees have opted for the PIP, many have also decided against it and have moved on, the spokesperson said.
“Snapdeal has over one million daily transacting users on its ecosystem and all our efforts are focused on becoming part of the daily life of millions of Indians,” the spokesperson said.
Following the notification, some employees demonstrated outside a Delhi-based call centre of Snapdeal. According to reports, Snapdeal has started reducing employee count at its contact centre from November last year, bringing it down to about 600, from a peak of 1,800-2,000.
According to industry sources, this has been a practice for some time now.
“When you have cheaper third-party sourcing available, keeping a huge team for customer-support services does not make sense. Large e-commerce companies are already doing it,” they said.
There have been no lay-offs, the company said, which has a team of some 8,000 people across the country.
The booming online commerce in India has created thousands of jobs across the country.
While most of these companies continue to be driven by investor money, concerns around profitability are being raised and many of these firms are now looking at restructuring their business model to run leaner operations.
(With PTI inputs)
