Wipro plans robust hiring in second half of FY21

Without quantifying the magnitude of hiring, Govil said the hiring will be across geographies including in US, Europe, and India in skills in new-age technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), digital, and internet of things (IoT).

Wipro said it never stopped hiring during the nationwide covid-induced lockdown. It hired about 12,000 employees including 3,000 freshers in the second quarter ended September and the voluntary attrition rate on a trailing twelve months (TTM) basis declined to 11% from 13% in the previous quarter.

The Bengaluru-based firm said it will roll out promotions for “high performers" in bands up to B3 effective 1 December, 2020. Bands up to B3 form about 80% of the company’s workforce which translates to about 145,000 employees out of its total headcount of over 180,000.

Govil said the hikes will be in the typical range as last year which is 4-10% for on-site employees and 8-10% for offshore. The engineering campus hires categorised under band “Team-Rainbow" will receive confirmatory hikes effective 1 December.

Upskillng and reskilling of talent is a “big agenda item" for Wipro, Govil said. Wipro has been able to do this at scale and it has trained and reskilled several employees on the bench who have been deployed in projects later, he said.

Currently, 98% of Wipro's employees continue to work from home although chairman Rishad Premji recently said that he believes it is important for people to work from offices to build culture and nurture innovation.

“I definitely do not see everybody working from home in the foreseeable future. Everybody will come (to office) some of the time," Premji said in a recent interaction with Chiratae Ventures.