Wipro lays off 452 freshers for ‘poor performance’ in internal assessment

This comes at a time that the company has delayed onboarding for freshers for many months

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Wipro has let go of 452 freshers it had made offers to but had not onboarded yet, the IT major confirmed on January 20. The freshers were let go because they “performed poorly in assessment repeatedly even after training,” the company said.

“At Wipro, we take pride in holding ourselves to the highest standards. In line with the standards, we aim to set for ourselves, we expect every entry-level employee to have a certain level of proficiency in their designated area of work,” the company said in a statement.

As part of the evaluation process, Wipro includes assessments as well to “align employees with business objects of the organisation and requirements of clients," according to its statement. “This systematic and comprehensive performance evaluation process triggers a series of actions such as mentoring and retraining and in some cases separation of certain employees from the company."

In the case of the freshers being let go, sources confirmed to Moneycontrol that the cost of training employees — Rs 75,000 — has been waived off for these employees.

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This comes at a time when Wipro has delayed onboarding for freshers for many months. In an interview to Moneycontrol last week, Chief Human Resources Officer Saurabh Govil admitted that onboarding will be delayed, but that the company would not renege on any offers.

When asked about a timeline for onboarding freshers, Govil had said that he couldn’t give a timeline. He had said that those with higher scores are onboarded faster and in some cases, there is retesting for those with lower scores. “It’s a combination,” he had said.

The email sent to freshers whose employment has been terminated read that as part of the onboarding process, they were required to meet “requisite technical standards so as to demonstrate your readiness to commence work”.

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“To this end, Wipro has designed a program to ensure that it provides adequate training and guidance to all fresher's. We note that you were provided an extensive 5 week training on Project Readiness Program (PRP) followed by a PRP assessment." Post this, an assessment was conducted and if they did not pass this, an additional final technical assessment was then conducted, following which the employment was terminated as they did not meet the assessment qualifying criteria of 40 percent.

“As you may be aware, that as per the Offer Letter, either party may, terminate the employment by providing (30) days prior notice to the other party. Pursuant to the terms of the Offer Letter, we hereby wish to terminate your employment with us by serving upon you this notice of termination,” it read.

The development comes on a day when Google parent Alphabet announced that it will be laying off 12,000 employees across the globe and Healthcare platform MediBuddy sacked 8 percent of its staff citing unfavourable 'market conditions'.