HR head at HCL Tech says onshore offshore model changing due to pandemic

Flexible workforce trend is here to stay, says Apparao V V

The onsite-offshore model has changed over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, and flexible workforce is a trend that is here to stay, said Apparao V V, the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at HCL Technologies. 

Speaking to Business Standard post fourth quarter results, Apparao said, "The offshore onsite model definitely has changed. In the earlier years, it used to be 70:30 (Offshore:Onshore). Now, in FY21, it has become 85:15. That is because a lot of customers who have not spent enough IT dollars, realised during the pandemic that their business processes are not digitalised, which is impacting them."

Over the next few years, because of the acceptance of work from home, Apparao, "What I foresee as we go forward, is that quite a few people will become a flexible workforce. (For example) somebody may want to work only four hours a day for whatever reason...So the so-called gig workforce is something which I believe will increasingly become more and more important."  

He added that the backend in terms of labour laws and social security benefits will have to be put in place before this becomes a big part of the current IT space. 

The Noida-based technology services firm has invested in its workforce, bringing down attrition to 9.9 per cent during the quarter ended March 31, 2021. One part of the effort is also reskilling. 

"Our skilling, which we measure in terms of million hours, used to be roughly 0.8 million to 1 million in FY19 and a large part of FY20. Today that has become 2.35 million hours per quarter, so we have more than doubled during the past few quarters. Our internal fulfilment which used to be in high teens, is now 55 per cent," he said.

The firm also reported its highest-ever new deal booking in the quarter, worth $3.1 billion -- a 49 per cent increase annually, with an all-time high exit pipeline.  

Both the bookings and pipeline cut across verticals, geographies, and service lines, CEO C Vijayakumar said on Friday. He said both were underpinned by tremendous momentum in digital propositions, such as application modernisation, cloud migration, data analytics cybersecurity, and digital workplace.

Apparao said the company was able to fulfill these large deals because it trained entry-level graduate engineers with decent coding skills, giving them a bit of upskilling and training them in agile technologies. 

The firm is also looking to hire 15,000-20,000 freshers in the current financial year.