Wipro managed to post six sequential quarters of headcount decline as of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, and a second consecutive full year of headcount drop. But the IT services major is not looking to go back to campus to hunt new talent anytime soon.
According to Saurabh Govil, chief human resources officer (CHRO) of Wipro, the company is yet to complete onboarding of freshers who received offer letters during its post-Covid hiring spree.
Moreover, given the volatile demand environment, Wipro will focus on improving its operational efficiency by increasing its utilisation rate and deploying benched employees first.
Speaking at the company’s Q4 earnings conference, Govil said, “Campus hiring is a combination of looking at demand, utilisation and when the hiring is going to happen. We have significantly improved our utilisation this quarter, it’s an all-time high. We hope to increase and sustain that. We have been able to reduce our bench which was there and deploy people faster.”
Wipro’s utilisation for Q4 stood at 86.9 percent, up from 84 percent in Q4.
Attrition rate though has remained flat QoQ at 14.2 percent, but reduced significantly YoY from 19.4 percent in the same quarter previous fiscal.
Govil said, “The year before last there was huge demand, so post Covid, we went to the campuses and made large number of offers. We are still to finish with all those offers. We have promised and will first ensure all those offers are honoured before we go and hire somebody else. That’s the plan as we move forward.”
“We will induct freshers in this year and I don’t have a number right now. It will depend on demand as the macro environment continues to be uncertain,” he added.
Wipro reported a decline of 6,180 employees in Q4 on April 19.
On a full-year basis, Wipro's headcount was down by 24,516 in FY24, the second consecutive quarter of full-year headcount drop. The total headcount for FY24 stood at 2,34,054.
Not just Wipro, Infosys too had slowed down on campus hiring, as the company is hiring more than half of its freshers off campus.
Govil added that headcount reduction was mainly driven by market and demand environment, as well as the operational efficiencies, which have been reflected in the company's increased margins.
In the long-term, with AI taking centre-stage and as the company moves into more IP-based platforms AI, there could be a divergence coming, more and more in terms of headcount, according to Govil.
"But we still need to look at our entire portfolio, a large amount of work which we do with our clients, So it's a combination of both (demand and tech changes) as we move forward, and that it will evolve over a period of time," he said.
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