Vodafone Idea staff receive increments and bonus

For the first time in two years, since the merger of the two companies, 10,000 staff members of Vodafone India have received an average pay hike of nine per cent. Also, the employees received a 97 per cent bonus! The top performers were given a pay hike of 17 per cent.

The telecom company had been unable to offer increments for the last two years, as it was suffering losses. Naturally, a feeling of insecurity had started gripping the employees. However, even though the hikes have come a bit late, they are better than the increments given by Airtel and Jio, and have managed to reassure the employees, who have been very uncertain about their future for some time now.

While Airtel offered an average increment of 7.5 per cent to almost 16,000 employees in June, Jio is reportedly expected to offer increments only in August this year.

Following the merger of Vodafone and Idea Cellular, the workforce had shrunk when Vodafone had laid off more than 100,000 employees.

With the arrival of Reliance Jio, the telecom market has experienced major disruption and suffered loss of profits. The stiff competition has affected the subscriber bases of all the old operators.

Last year, Jio managed to increase its base by almost 16 million rural subscribers, while Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost approx. 20 million and 13 million subscribers, respectively.