HCL Tech adds 2,089 employees in Q1; attrition rate rises to 23.8%

The office of HCL Technologies Ltd at Noida.

HCL Technologies added 2,089 employees in the first quarter ended June 30, 2022. The total headcount of the IT services major currently stands at 210,966.

This is significantly lower given that the company hired over 11,000 employees in the last quarter and around 7,522 employees in the first quarter of last fiscal.

Earlier, the company said it plans to add 45,000 new employees in FY23. It has also been outsourcing employees from its new frontier locations including Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Romania, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

The attrition rate for the quarter stood at 23.8 percent on the last twelve months (LTM) basis, up from 21.9 percent last quarter and 11.8 percent from Q1FY22. HCL Tech expects attrition rates to go up even in the coming quarter, but added that it will start stabilising in a couple of quarters.

HCL Tech’s numbers appear to be following a similar trend as TCS. TCS added 14,136 new hires in Q1, which is significantly lower than its Q4 net new additions of over 35,000 and even Q1FY22.

Apparao V V, Chief Human Resource Officer, HCL Technologies said, “We added one percent headcount QoQ at 2,089. We are focusing on our utilisation. We had a great year in terms of adding headcount, we grew 23.4 percent and we are utilising that in a better manner.”

He added, “Our new headcount in new vista locations which include Nagpur and Vijayawada grew by 30.5 percent YoY which is very heartening for us as our supply chain gets distributed in new talent markets we explore. Same with our global new frontier areas like Poland, Bulgaria, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, and Brazil -- there too our headcount grew 30 percent YoY.”

In India, HCL Tech crossed 20,000 employees in new vista locations and in new frontier locations it crossed over 18,000.

“This gives us a very good spread in terms of talent sourcing and any business operations that are required,” Apparao said.

Fresher addition and upskilling

HCL Tech has added 6,023 freshers this quarter, which is almost doubling down compared to last year’s numbers in the same quarter and the company plans to onboard another 10,400 freshers in current quarter.

“In terms of training, we spent 2 million hours in Q1 and almost 40,000 employees got upskilled and deployed this year. And our internal fulfilment rate because of training both in terms of general skills and niche skills have increased significantly and internal fulfilment rate is touching 50 percent which is healthy, and expect to increase going forward,” Apparao said.