NEW DELHI : At 11.45am on 6 April, an HR professional working with NIIT Technologies was requested to “catch up" with his supervisor via Microsoft Teams.
What followed wasn’t pleasant. “Put in your resignation over email and write you are resigning due to personal reasons. That way, your background checks will not get affected in the future," the supervisor told him in a measured tone, adding that a Boston Consulting Group audit had flagged extra employees in HR.
Six other employees from NIIT Technologies’ HR department were asked to put in their papers the same day. The company did not officially clarify why the lay-offs came in April, during India’s lockdown to flatten the covid-19 curve.