Flipkart postpones start dates for new graduate recruits
Indian online retailer Flipkart has announced that it is postponing the start dates for its new intake of graduate recruits and management trainee by six months while it completes its organizational restructuring programme. The news about the postponed joining dates broke in the Indian media earlier this week, causing a whirl of speculation about the probable causes. Yesterday (25 May), Flipkart responded by issuing a statement on its official blog.
“In the past few months, we’ve been working on restructuring our businesses to strike the right balance among key levers such as innovation, strategic execution, and operational excellence. The organizational restructuring involves the creation of new business units in some cases and mergers in other cases,” said Flipkart.
“As a part of this ongoing restructuring,” continued the Flipkart statement, “the campus program will also go through a comprehensive overhaul to ensure that it is in line with our new business structure and that our campus recruits start working towards larger company goals from Day One.
“As we work on redesigning this program, we have taken a decision to postpone the joining of new recruits by a few months. Instead of June 2016, the new recruits will now be part of the improved campus program in December 2016. Flipkart will also pay an additional joining bonus of Rs. 1.5 lakh to all campus recruits.”
Flipkart signed off its statement by emphasising that there will not be delays beyond December: “The decision to defer joining for 6 months has been taken after due evaluation of all possibilities and keeping in mind the timelines to complete the organizational restructuring at Flipkart. We are committed and absolutely confident of having all our trainees on board in December 2016.”
Judging by the comments left on the blog and, more emphatically, the continuing coverage in the media, Flipkart’s statement has not laid the controversy to rest. The relative paucity of the “additional joining bonus” came in for some strong criticism. “1.5Lk for six months deferral – are you kidding me? This is top cream of our country who can make that much in a month. Whoever made this decision has just matters bad to worse for Flipkart,” ran one of the comments on the Flipkart blog.
Meanwhile, the Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad (IIM-A) sent Flipkart an email (which has now been published in the Indian Times) saying that students were “in shock” about the decision and argued that “the amount of 1.5 lakhs offered as joining bonus hardly qualifies as compensation for seven months of forced unemployment”.
