Bucking the trend in the IT sector, HCLTech’s net headcount addition has increased by 3,617 in the third quarter ended December 31 for the fiscal year 2024, in line with the company's plans to start hiring after two previous quarters of slowdown.
Fresher additions for the quarter stood at 3,818 up from last quarter’s 3,630. The company's total headcount stood at 224,756.
Across the three quarters, the company has added 9,000 freshers. HCLTech targets to onboard 10,000 freshers in FY24.
This is coming after a decline in headcount in the past two quarters. The company’s headcount in Q1 had dropped by 2,506 and by 2,299 in Q2.
Speaking to the media at the company's earnings conference, Ramachandran Sundararajan, chief people officer at HCLTech said, "We continue to honour the commitments of fresher onboarding....Attrition is the lowest in last seven years. Compared YoY, this a 9 percent drop."
"We have also implemented the pay hikes for entry and junior level employees this quarter," he added.
HCLTech’s attrition in the last 12-month (LTM) basis for Q3 stood at 12.8 percent compared to the 14.2 percent reported last quarter. This is the lowest attrition for the company since the COVID-19 quarter in 2021. In Q3FY23, the attrition rate stood at 21.7 percent.
Its rival Infosys reported a headcount decline of around 6,101 in Q3 FY24, TCS's headcount shrunk by 5,680 employees, while Wipro reduced headcount by 4,473.
In an interview with Moneycontrol in October, CEO C Vijayakumar said while he was not looking to backfill attrition to improve utilisation in the previous quarters from Q3 onwards the company will start hiring. He expected the headcount to start going up in the second half of FY24.
On Poaching r0w
The top 5 Indian IT companies saw massive churn in senior leadership last year. Many company veterans moved out to take up top level roles at rival firms and mid-sized IT companies, making poaching and breaching of non-compete clause a serious concern in the industry.
Recently, Wipro sued its former CFO Jatin Dalal for joining rival Cognizant by violating non-compete clause in his employment contract. Wipro also sued another former senior vice president Mohd Haque in a similar case. He too joined Cognizant.
Infosys even sent out written communication to Cognizant from deterring the company from poaching senior leaders further.
Addressing a query on this, Sundararajan said, "If we look at the retention of 0ur senior leadership and senior level talent, it is very impressive. The attrition is very low at lower single digit, almost negligible."
CEO and MD C Vijayakumar added, "We attribute it to the entrepreneurship culture of the company. Every senior leader is empowered to do the right thing for the business and grow. That's the culture ingrained in our DNA."
"People like me go out and come back again," CFO Prateek Aggarwal said jokingly.
HCLTech reported its Q3 earnings on January 12. The company's net profit grew 6.23 percent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 4,351 crore despite higher-than-expected furloughs, with BFSI and hi-tech being the problem areas.
Sequentially, net profit was up by 13.51 percent, helped by $50-million incremental revenue from the Verizon deal and additional income from Germany’s ASAP post-acquisition.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter grew 6.54 percent YoY at Rs 28,446 crore as compared to Rs 26,700 crore in Q3FY23.
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