Organisations in India are witnessing great business impact but fewer are adopting drastic people cost measures when compared to global findings, revealed a recent survey by Korn Ferry.

From customer-facing staff, middle managers to executives, most respondents both globally and in India believe that adjustments to rewards and benefits as a result of COVID-19 will likely affect employees throughout the organisation.

As per the survey, 22% organisations in APAC expect a serious impact on their business, where the company’s annual business revenue is expected to decline by more than 30 percent, with around half of these respondents expecting that the impact will be at least 50 percent.

In India, the most commonly implemented measures for rewards and benefits are on promotion and salary hike, with 23% organizations suspending the promotion increases and 18% organizations deferring and/or delaying salary increases. Also, only 14% organizations have implemented salary cuts.

Whle, 36% of organisations have implemented or are considering implementing a salary freeze to manage costs. Given the government’s extensive requests on avoiding laying-off employees, the majority of companies have not implemented or are not currently considering permanent staff layoff/redundancies (84%) or temporary layoff/furlough (83% without government subsidy support and 91% leveraging government subsidy). 

Roopank Chaudhary, Client Partner, Korn Ferry India said, “Given the current circumstances and uncertainties on the recovery for market conditions, business leaders are trying everything to survive this storm and manage their costs. Among the dozens of ways organisations are taking out labour costs are layoffs, hiring freezes, reduced hours, less reliance on contractors, reducing overtime, delaying bonuses or merit increases, suspending certain benefits like retirement savings/capital accumulation programs, and many others.”

“Communicative and action-oriented leadership is of utmost necessity during this period to make people feel secure and taken care of, and helping the workforce remain focused on preserving operations as best as possible as the outbreak spreads. Managing the challenges of this global pandemic will require innovation and agility amidst unprecedented uncertainty and business leaders will need to balance between implementing short-term measures to address immediate impact and keeping a long-term view on future growth.” he added.