Read the Curt email IIM-A sent Flipkart about bad hiring policies

It seems Flipkart’s organisation redesign decision is costing India’s largest e-commerce company heavily. This is because as a part of the ongoing process, it has also completely restructured its campus hiring process and thereby, deferred the joining dates of the fresh IIM batch it recruited recently by 6 months.

The decision has not gone down too well with IIM-Ahmedabad leading to the two locking horns over the issue.

In a recent mail from the office of IIM-Ahmedabad’s chairperson to Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and human resources head Nitin Sethi , the institute has used rather tough words to express their displeasure Flipkart’s decision. The mail reads:

“Our students hired by Flipkart rejected multiple opportunities that the campus had to offer and chose Flipkart over other well-reputed recruiters because of the strength of its brand.”

"The decision to defer the date of joining, coming as it does so close to the earlier promised date of June 2016, is sure to make this talent pool regret their decision of joining your company. Talented students fresh out of campus, on the eve of starting successful careers, now feel cheated. While we understand that restructuring calls for tough decisions in an organization, the matter of campus hiring could have been handled much better, with campuses forewarned well in advance and engaged as partners in this decision-making.”

“The compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh being offered is utterly unacceptable. Compensation should be in the form of a monthly payment starting June and not as a lump sum as joining bonus or arrears.”

The delay in the joining dates should be shortened, the letter says, and the company must give a written commitment that candidates will have a job when the joining date is finalized.

“Rude shocks due to unilateral decision-making does little to help strengthen relationships with the campus. Future engagement of Flipkart with B-school campuses is bound to get affected as a relationship based on mistrust and lack of transparency can never be mutually beneficial," the letter further reads.

Meanwhile, Flipkart’s recent announcement, that led to this entire explosion, read: “We have re-designed our campus program in order to align that with our new business focus and provide meaningful opportunities to our campus hires. As part of this re-design, we are looking at a decentralized program that takes into account specific business needs as per the business unit. As part of the redesign process, we will be postponing the joining of the new recruits by a few months. This postponement was necessitated by the fact that Flipkart is undergoing an organization redesign that involves creation of new units in some cases and integration of a few units. Instead of June 2016, the new recruits will now be part of the improved campus program in December 2016. Flipkart will also be paying an additional joining bonus of Rs.1.5 lakh to all campus recruits.”

The explosive mail that the company has now received has also been marked to several other IIMs.

“Yes, we have been copied. As far as a decision is concerned, we are still talking to students as to what they would want to do in this situation. If they want to look for alternatives or stick to the offer. It’s only after we are done talking to the students that we shall take a collective decision in this matter,” said Sapna Agarwal, Head CDS at IIM Bangalore.

Meanwhile, Flipkart reportedly has responded to the institute confirming it will absorb all the students it has hired by December. However, the company has refused to increase the compensation as demanded by the college.