Firms bare hearts, lend a hand to staff
Chennai : Companies are standing by their employees in their hour of crisis.
Tech major Cognizant, which houses more than 60,000 of its employees across 11 development centres in Chennai, has earmarked Rs 195 crore to help with immediate and long-term recovery needs of its employees and business partners. Apart from direct grants and loans, the company is setting up healthcare teams.
Telecom firm MTS has covered part of the expenses that employees will incur on vehicles or homes damaged due to the rains in Chennai and Puducherry. “To ensure that our employees resume their normal life immediately, we have credited their bank accounts with Rs 3,000 for two-wheeler damage, Rs 10,000 for four wheelers and Rs 30,000 for home repairs,” said Suresh S Kumar, COO, MTS.
All affected employees have been living in the company guesthouse for the past one week and during the weekend, the company will distribute one month worth provisions, blankets, kitchen equipment to 125 off-roll and 30 on-roll employees.
Country’s largest lender SBI announced salary advance loans of up to three months salary. The bank also waived issuance of duplicate ATM cards, and announced 10% of car loan amount as repair costs.
Several BPO firms have extended a salary advance loans for its employees. “We know our employees are impacted because of Chennai Floods. We have decided to take care of them financially, albeit to a small extent. We have decided to extend a one off offer of 15 days salary to every employee as a goodwill gesture immediately. The amount will be credited on December 15,” a BPO unit in Ambattur said.
Raintree Hotels which has two hotel properties in Chennai and Attune Technologies, a healthcare startup will provide affected employees with cash and kind contributions collected amongst the employees.