We hired 1,200 freshers last quarter, will hire 2,000 more: L&T Tech chief

In a Q&A, the CEO and Managing Director of L&T Technology Services, Amit Chadham spoke about attrition, the way forward and the Covid impact on business

L&T Technology Services reported second quarter results on Tuesday, posting a 39.1 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 230 crore for the September 2021 quarter and raised its dollar revenue growth guidance to 19-20 per cent. In a conversation with Neha Alawadhi, the CEO and Managing Director Amit Chadha spoke about attrition, the way forward and the Covid impact on business.

Edited excerpts:

What gives you the confidence for the raised guidance? What is demand looking like for LTTS?

Our raised guidance is the result of the large deal engine that we started running many quarters ago. We institutionalised and strengthened in the last six quarters and it has helped us with deal wins a lot more. We do see the demand environment has improved and this is across the board-electric, autonomous connected vehicles, med tech, digital manufacturing and digital products. We're seeing spend coming back in high tech as well as oil and gas, so all this put together is helping clients make decisions that they were prolonging earlier. A lot of uncertainty around Covid is going away because people have learned how to live with Covid, for lack of a better word.

How high is attrition at LTTS? How is the overall demand-supply situation for the business?

Our attrition is at 16.5 per cent, which is about 2 per cent higher than last quarter, but still lower than the increment our peer group has had. But having said that, we're doing two or three things. We're trying to improve the employee experience so that we can continue to hold onto our bright stars. We are trying to make sure that we provide the right platform and opportunities to them so that as we continue to grow, they grow with us. We are also providing them technical avenues, providing them project management avenues.

We've done the increments that we had to, and finally we are hiring in loads. We've hired 1,200 freshers last quarter, we're hiring 2,000 more freshers in the next two quarters. Plus we are hiring laterals, which I feel will be good enough for us as we move forward. I believe it will take a couple of quarters to stabilize.

Have you taken employee retention measures or do you have any future plans?

There are retention bonuses we've given out, and we've created a Leaders League which allows people to be able to get trained for the next level role. This cuts across the company. We have a Youth COO Advisory Business Council which run individual development plans for them. We have a CEO Club that runs. In addition to that, we are creating something called Star Squad which is about 1500 people in the company. We've got a group development plan for them for the Star Squad. We've got a development plan for every 10 people.

How are you thinking about work-related travel?

Travel within the US is back on. Since August 15th I have been traveling and meeting clients in the Bay Area, Detroit etc. Our senior leaders are traveling. I traveled out to India to our Mysore campus for the first time after 18 months. 26 per cent of our employees are back in the office. It's not everyday, some people come in five days a week, but we are rotating people in and out. Once people get their second vaccine completed and there's no third wave, I do expect that people will go up to about 50 per cent over the next three to six months, and then stabilize at about 80-90 per cent in the next beyond six months.