Unfortunate that we’re being targeted, have been transparent and fair: Wipro HR head on fresher onboarding delays

Saurabh Govil, President & Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro

Wipro’s fourth quarter has been rife with controversies regarding the recruitment of freshers. First, when the company gave freshers the option of taking a pay cut in order to be onboarded early, and later when freshers were terminated on failing internal performance assessments.

During this period, Wipro has also seen the exit of India head Satya Easwaran, Integrated Digital, Engineering and Application Services (iDEAS) head Rajan Kohli, and the CFOs of both Americas 1 and 2.

Wipro’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Saurabh Govil spoke to Moneycontrol about the company’s hiring plans, top-level exits, generative AI, the freshers controversy, and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

What do the hiring trends look like for FY24? What skills are you going to hire for?

There are four areas that we have identified as our growth pillars — data, cloud, engineering, and cybersecurity. We are hiring for specific skills and countries, but not at the same level as before. But we see continued growth and we'll continue to hire. As CEO Thierry (Delaporte) had explained earlier, we've also invested early in Q1 of this year, so that we can train people and grow them.

Secondly, we believe that we have room for improvement in the utilisation (of human resources). We have shown a two percentage point improvement. (in Q4).  The markets are a bit choppy, the environment is choppy. Our business is impacted by that. Right now we have the resources to manage whatever growth we are seeing in our pockets.

Attrition has been declining since Q1FY23. Is all attrition being backfilled?

In specific areas, yes, but not all, e.g., when somebody is on the bench. This improves utilisation. But, if people are billable, obviously, we'll backfill that.

What about the salaries?

The premium we were paying one-and-a-half years back has since cooled as the market is not so heated. This year we've had the highest-ever onboarding of NGAs (next-gen associates, or freshers), at 22,000-plus. We have also seen the highest-ever deployment in projects for such hires. Still, we have a bench strength whom we are training and they can be deployed.

Telling freshers to take a pay cut from Rs 6.5 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh if they wanted to be onboarded early is pretty unprecedented. What was the rationale behind this move?

We hired people from campuses at Rs 3.5 lakh, with everyone hired at the same salary.  Then, as a company, we said that we will invest in these people. At our cost, we trained them into becoming full-stack engineers. We had said that they will be onboarded at a higher salary of Rs 6.5 lakh after they completed the training and cleared the assessment.

We onboarded the first batch of Velocity candidates, and then we realised that we didn't have a requirement at that point in time for such resources. However, we were onboarding people at the lower band. So we gave them a choice, in all transparency. Their old option was still valid, and they could wait to be onboarded. Or, there was another option: they could join at lower band.

Ninety-two percent of the candidates chose to join at the lower band because they were raring to go. There are a handful of those, who have chosen to wait. When they are onboarded, they'll be onboarded at Rs 6.5 lakh. We have been most transparent and fair. We have not cut anybody's salary. But unfortunately, that’s how it got picked up.

Assessments have been happening for years. People are away from actual work (from the time they graduate to when they are onboarded). It is to help them get trained and again make an investment in them. I don't know why it's becoming an issue.

What’s the waiting period for freshers who are yet to be onboarded?

Given the market scenario, right now I don't have a particular date for this.  We are doing it in a phased manner and we will honour every commitment.

I was reading somewhere that 58 percent of freshers have not been onboarded yet. It's unfortunate that we are being targeted because it's happening all across and we are being most honest and fair. In fact, we were the only ones to invest Rs 30,000 in training each candidate before they even became our employees.

Have you gone to campuses this year?

No, because we have enough people. Our duty is to first honour the job offers we’ve made. That only affirms that we are very clear about onboarding.

Industry-wide, is there a case to be made for increasing fresher salaries?

Not in the current scenario. Salary anywhere is a function of demand and supply. Right now, there is an oversupply of freshers. In that scenario, you cannot have salaries going up.

You’d previously said you would promote employees every quarter. Is that still tenable in the current environment?

Absolutely. Because we have onboarded the highest number of freshers and committed a growth path to them, we will continue to grow them. The number of people we promote could come down a bit because the opportunity for growth has shrunk as the industry is not growing.

What’s the next hike cycle?

It was in Q2 of last year, it’ll be in Q2 this year as well. We do not know the percentage of the hike yet.

Wipro had some top-level exits in Q4. What was behind these exits? How are you looking at filling these positions?

Top-level attrition is in the low single digits. As a company, it is not something that we are worried about.

When (CEO) Thierry came, we did a reorganisation, and certain jobs were not required, so people left. We are driving a much more outcome-driven, high-performance culture. We have also onboarded a lot of new leadership talent into the organisation with critical expertise. It's a good mix right now.  We have about 275-odd people of the rank of VP and above.

Regarding Rajan (Kohli), since iDEAS and iCORE (Integrated Cloud Infrastructure, Digital Operations, Risk and Enterprise Cyber Security Services) had become so big, it was decided to split them into four, and we have leaders for all of them. We either expanded roles or promoted people internally.

Are you working on generative AI? What’s Wipro’s view? 

We are big on it. Microsoft is a leader in this and its CEO Satya Nadella has said how Wipro has led the charge in adopting generative AI.  We are doing this for our clients and also internally. For example, in HR, we intend that over a period of time, 80 percent of employee queries which are standard in nature will be responded to without any human intervention.

We are doing this in other areas as well. We feel that as a first step, a lot of routines and the repetitive nature of work can be better managed using generative AI.

It's the dominant area of discussion with clients. We're building it into our solutions. We’re seeing how we can code faster using AI or using no-code or low-code solutions. But there are challenges, like security, and we need to strike a balance. Currently, it works in a closed environment.

Are people being trained? 

More than training, it's adoption. We have a number of use cases in terms of how we are using it for our clients in different industries, like retail and CPG (consumer packaged goods). There is a lot of action happening on this front and it will only explode as we move forward.

We are scaling our data and AI practice. Our Chief Technology Officer Subha Tatavarti is driving a lot of innovation around that as well.