In mid-May, when Accenture employees in Pune walked into a meeting with their managers, they may have expected a routine annual appraisal discussion. Instead, they were told things would be done differently this year.

The IT-services major has officially changed how it awards salary hikes to employees worldwide. Instead of peppering the full amount across monthly salaries for the year, Accenture has split it into two parts. Half the hike will be added to employees’ base salary as before, while the other half will be paid as a lump sum. This year’s payout will go out on 30 June.

“If they had told us about this change two to three months in advance, we could’ve planned better: to stay or look for other jobs,” said an Accenture employee from the Pune office.

On the face of it, the revised structure gives employees quick cash after years of frozenStoryboard18Accenture announces salary hikes and promotions after 2.5 years hikes. While some are happy about the immediate payout, the majority worry about long-term effects.

Since only half of the annual raise is rolled into the base salary, each subsequent raise is calculated on a lower base, suppressing salary growth over time. Besides, base salary acts as the foundation for gratuity, provident fund (PF), and even loan eligibility.

Accenture isn’t the only one re-engineering the payouts. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recently shiftedMoneycontrolTCS rolls out annual salary hikes of 5% on average, revised CTC structure sparks confusion a part of its quarterly performance bonus to an annual payout, making it inconvenient for employees to quit mid-year. Companies are also measuring employee performance based on their in-office attendance and the number of projects they complete.

IT-services companies are struggling to keep their businesses growing. Earlier in June, Accenture’s stock crashedThe Wall Street JournalAccenture Takes a Hit on Worsening Outlook and Cloudy AI Future nearly 20% after the company missed expectations in its third-quarter earnings and posted a 2% decline in new services bookings.