Wipro crosses 200,000 employees mark

Wipro said that it had crossed the 200,000 employees mark in the June quarter, with a total headcount of 209,890 globally. The IT services firm reported a net addition of 12, 150 employees during the quarter with attrition at 15.5%. “This was 80% of what we added in the last financial year and the highest in the last decade,” said Thierry Delaporte, CEO, Wipro. He said that the company would hire 33% more freshers in FY2022 as compared to the previous year. “Growth is our priority and we will ensure that talent supply is not a constrain to it,” said Delaporte. Wipro will onboard 6,000 freshers during Q2FY22, the highest ever it has done and will also make offers to 30,000 freshers to join the company next year.

Higher attrition, he said, had become a universal issue with the pandemic making the labour force more mobile. “We are adopting to it and have doubled down on our intake of freshers from campus across the world and in reskilling our employees,” he said. The company would also roll out salary hikes for 80% of its workforce effective September 1, the second round of hikes in this year. It will roll out three promotion cycles over a 12 month period, from December 2020 to December 2021, for a large majority of its workforce.

Cross-town rival Infosys said yesterday that it had added over 8,000 employees during the quarter and would hire about 35,000 fresh college graduates globally during this fiscal to meet the demand for digital talent. India’s largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services too had said earlier that it would hire 40,000 college graduates in India. TCS crossed the 500,000 employees mark at the end of the quarter.

Indian services firms have ramped up hiring in the past year, both freshers and lateral hiring, as an increase in digital transformation projects translates into higher demand for talent. Additionally, companies are investing in upskilling and reskilling existing employees in order to meet the demand for talent in emerging technologies.