Wipro added 1,469 people in the June quarter, the lowest quarterly addition in the last one year. The number of people added was well over 2,000 in the previous three quarters.
The trend is similar to that in other IT companies, and indicates an effort to improve employee utilization that had dropped significantly over the past two years because of the sharp slowdown in IT demand. Wipro's total headcount now is 1,47,281. The company's voluntary attrition in the June quarter came down by 50 bps to 13.2% compared to that in the March quarter. It was 15.6% in the June quarter of last year.
Involuntary attrition rose to 4.9% from 3.7% sequentially. "This is not unusual because that's the time when we have appraisals, and there is a bit of churn post that due to performance reasons. Some of them fall in the lower performance quadrant and choose to move on," said Pratik Kumar, executive VP-HR in Wipro.
Despite fewer people being added in the June quarter, the company's employee utilization (excluding trainees) dropped to 73.3%, from 74.6% in the previous quarter. "We take freshers during the quarter and we have not stretched the fresher joining dates. Hence there will be some ups and downs in the utilization rates," said T K Kurien, CEO of Wipro.
The industry's shift to focus on high-margin businesses has resulted in revenue growth accruing from new service lines like consulting , mobility, cloud and analytics that is leading to modest growth in fresh intake of engineers. Kurien said, "Overall , everybody is trying to do two things: they are trying to manage the overhang of the previous years and they are looking to automate more. To that extent, if you look at employment in the industry itself, I would say that the secular trend would be a decline rather than massive increase."
Kumar said, "I do think it's going to be a challenge going forward -- a million plus employable graduates who are coming out and therefore, the extent to which the industry is in a position to absorb them and drive productivity ." Wipro gave an annual wage hike of 6-8 % to offshore employees and 2-3 % to onsite employees effective June 1.
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