Capgemini: Greed of Top India Management with 100% Certification Drive
With the forced certification levied on employees of Sogeti Business Unit at Capgemini India, the title of this article, ‘Capgemini: Greed of Top India Management with 100% Certification Drive’, couldn’t be more apt. Certifications are good but not forced certifications, especially when the forced certification is risking the employee’s personal finances. Read on to know the story.
What is 100% Certification Drive at Sogeti India at Capgemini
According to sources, the new head of Sogeti India has imposed a mandatory certification drive in which all Sogeti India employees have to get themselves certified in any technology/area of business.
The head of Sogeti India at Capgemini says on internal Capgemini meetings that the certification has to be done on the technology that Capgemini’s consultants are currently working on, or, in an area of their expertise. However, it looks like, in the hindsight, this very new head at Sogeti India is pressurizing the entire management hierarchy in a top to bottom approach to get all employees certified in any random arbitrary technology just to appease clients to get more business.
According to sources, there are only a handful of technologies/organizations that have a partnership/tie-up with Capgemini India’s Sogeti Business Unit for which the certification cost is waived off through a prepaid voucher. Some of these technologies where prepaid vouchers are available are AWS, Azure, ITIL, Java and Agile.
An employee is asked to take any certification from this list of allowed certifications and the cost of certification would be borne by Capgemini in the form of a certification voucher. On the flip side, when an employee’s current skill set doesn’t fall under the list of these pre-approved certifications, then the employee is either asked to pay the certification cost from his own pocket or is forced to take a certification that is in the list of certifications that fall under the pre-approved list where Sogeti/Capgemini has a tie-up with the certification vendors.
In case the employee is working on niche technology and if he doesn’t want to compromise with his career trajectory, he is asked to do certification on his own by paying the certification cost upfront from his own pocket, on the reimbursement condition that the money would be reimbursed only when the employee passes the certification exam. If the employee fails the certification exam after paying the upfront cost from his own pocket, there would be no reimbursement from Sogeti, Capgemini India.
The Problem With 100% Certification Drive At Capgemini India
Now the question arises, why would an employee pay for a certification from his own pocket upfront when Capgemini Sogeti is forcing the employee to get certified?
What would happen to all the employees who work on niche technologies for example Kotlin/ Talend/ Salesforce/ Data Analytics/ SQL/ Hive/ EBS Information Discovery/ Informatica/ MongoDB/ Android/ Objective C/ IOT/ Artificial Intelligence/ Big Data etc.?
One of the sources said,
“This is what happens when a bozo MBA in HR takes over as the head of a technology business unit!”
Not only this, for the vouchers too that Capgemini is providing, one has to clear a mock test within a period of 14 days to get 100% discount voucher for the certification cost. If this person can’t clear the mock test, he needs to pay 50% of the certification cost.
Just imagine, how would a guy working on Kotlin get upto speed to clear AWS Certified Solution Architect in such tight deadlines!
Capgemini Employees Getting Pissed Off
A point to note here is that not every one likes to change their chosen area of expertise just because an organization wants to boast before its clients of 100% certifications.
Not everyone would want to do a forced certification that is in the list of approved certifications where an organization is having a tie-up with the certification vendor.
Not every employee would be in a financial situation to pay the upfront certification cost.
Some technologies would be on the verge of extinction and the employees still working on such technologies would need more time to study and prepare seriously for a new certification on a completely new technology.
There my be a majority of employees who would not be on bench and would already be working in a demanding client facing projects. How would these billable employees spare time for forced certifications?
Should the forced certifications not be limited to people on bench?
Attrition Rate Increase At Capgemini
In these trying times of COVID, the greed of Sogeti India Head at Capgemini is clearly seen to get more business by forcing 100% certification drive on all employees.
There’s no attempt by the senior management to stand for the career paths of employees who are not in line with the list of allowed certifications to allow them a voucher free of cost to take the certification exam. Instead, employees are asked to pay the upfront cost themselves and the reimbursement would happen only when the employee shows a ‘pass’ certificate (under tight deadlines).
In fact, the Directors working under Sogeti Head are pushing their teams for any irrelevant certification just for the sake of getting certified. Where’s the welfare of Capgemini employees?
Certainly the management is concerned with just improving their own profits so that they can stash up more money in their bank accounts on the cost of the employee’s derailed careers because of irrelevant forced certifications.
Low salaries, tons of client deliverables and work load coupled with internal and external mandatory certifications and trainings along with all the factors mentioned above have resulted in an increase in the attrition rates at Capgemini India.
How fair is it to call and treat employees as “resources”?
Certainly, “People DO NOT Count, Only Results Matter”. This has been the new slogan for Capgemini’s greed to increase the bottom line.
Also, employees are not necessarily getting the future they want!
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