
Cognizant to hike salaries in August, delayed by second year
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. will give annual salary increases to its employees from August this year, making it the second time the Nasdaq-listed company has delayed salary hikes by at least five months.
In a town hall from the company’s newly refurbished Kolkata office on Thursday, Cognizant chief executive S. Ravi Kumar promised salary hikes from 1 August even as bonuses to eligible employees will be rolled out in March. “Cognizant will award bonuses in March.
Associates will receive eLetters with bonus details the week of 10 March," read Cognizant’s internal memo shared with employees and seen by Mint. The company further instructed managers to communicate the bonuses to their team members by 11 March. The Teaneck, New Jersey-based company typically gives hikes and bonuses around March, but since Ravi Kumar took over as chief executive, bonuses are given in March while hikes are given in August.
Cognizant last gave hikes ranging between 1% and 5% in August last year. Kumar’s early proclamation of a hike this year is possibly being done to arrest attrition. Voluntary attrition in the tech services arm, which makes up the bulk of the company’s workforce, rose to 15.9% at the end of 2024 from 13.8% in the year-ago period.
Attrition refers to the number of people who have left their company. As of December 2024, Cognizant’s voluntary attrition is higher than peers such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, and HCL Technologies Ltd, which reported attrition of 13%, 13.7%, and 13.2%, respectively, in the last 12 months. To be sure, attrition for TCS and Infosys includes attrition for their IT services arm, whereas HCLTech excludes the digital process automation wing.
. Read on livemint.com