Vodafone employees get 7-8% salary hike

Telecom Lead Asia: Vodafone India employees have received 7-8 percent salary hike for the current financial year.

The increase per individual is based on performance that has been mapped out on a Bell Curve, which assesses performance not as an absolute but relative to peers, Economic Times reported, quoting Vodafone India’s HR director Ashok Ramachandran.

Vodafone India has paid over 100 percent of the company’s total variable bill of the year ending March. The variable payout is made based on the performance of the individual as well as of the organization.

The telecom major employs around 11,500 people. Out of these, around 1,500 sit in corporate offices while the rest are ground staff. Staff costs account for less than 6 percent of the company’s total expenditure.

Telecom industry analysts say that the sector is getting back to better days. Recently, Reliance Jio Infocomm, the 4G venture of RIL, said it will have a 10,000 member team next year from the current 3,000.

Bharti Airtel has around 21,000 employees in India as on March 2013. Bharti Airtel has added 3,183 jobs in the fourth quarter of FY 2013. Bharti Airtel’s headcount has gone up to 26,596 in Q4 FY 2013 from 23,413 in Q3 FY 2013.

Vodafone has shown strong financial performance. Vodafone India’s fiscal 2013 revenue rose 10 percent to Rs 35,885 crore from the previous year. Its operating margin during the year increased 3.4 percentage points to 29.7 percent.

Vodafone’s India arm showed a healthier operating free cash flow with a 58.3 percent jump to 6,295 crore in the financial year 2013 compared with Rs 3,977 crore in the previous fiscal.

Though the company is facing regulatory challenges in India, Vodafone India observed strong growth in mobile voice minutes and a stable competitive environment contributed to the growth in revenue in Q4 2013.

During the third quarter subscriber verification regulations were changed, leading to a sharp fall in gross customer additions which resulted in net customer disconnections. The company lost 5,189,000 mobile users in Q3.

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