Coronavirus pandemic: Wipro to go slow on hiring; defer hikes, promotions

According to reports, the company had hired 12,000 freshers last fiscal and was planning to hire similar numbers in FY21. However, COVID-19 is likely to put a halt to these hiring.

Swathi Moorthy

April 15, 2020 / 20:40 IST

Wipro will go slow on hiring and defer on-boarding in FY21 due to the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic. The company went slow on on-boarding in Q4 FY20 as well, resulting in decline in its headcount by 4,500.

Total number of employees in Q4 FY20 stood at 182,886 as opposed to 187,318 for the quarter-ended December.

Saurabh Govil, Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro, attributed the net reduction to the company utilising its existing resources and going slow on hiring in Q4.

This, he said, resulted in higher utilisation rates. The company’s utilisation rate stood at 73.4 percent in March quarter as opposed to 70.2 percent in the Q3. The management's focus right now would be to how to utilise its current staff and manage the situation.

Govil did not disclose how much the company hired or on-boarded in Q4 and its plans going forward.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show