Wipro's secret of reducing attrition: Quarterly promotions, salary hikes

Quarterly promotions, salary hikes and a clear five year path on how an employees career and compensation will look like has helped Wipro, India’s fourth largest IT services company to bring down its attrition for the third straight quarter.

“We are clearly seeing our investment in freshers working out. We are giving them a five-year plan as to how their career and compensation will improve and that will help them. We are doing this more so with the freshers who are joining us now. And off late the market condition has also helped us in bringing the attrition down,” said Saurabh Govil, CHRO, Wipro.

For Q2FY23 Wipro reported attrition of 23 per cent down from 23.3 per cent in the previous quarter. Wipro promoted 10,000 colleagues and raised salaries across its bands. The company also said that it is giving 100 per cent of variable pay to 85 per cent of its employees this quarter.

On delay in onboarding freshers, the company said that it will honour every hiring offer it has made. The total headcount at the end of the quarter stood at 259,179.

Wipro, which hit headlines as it sacked 300 employees who were moonlighting with competition, reiterated that moonlighting was an ethical issue. Govil added that the company is not averse to employees doing something on weekends but when they have two full time jobs it’s a challenge.

Govil also said that there are enough tools available that make it possible to find out if an employee is moonlighting. “There are different avenues available, one can see if someone is getting PFs paid from two sources. There are startups in this space that crawl the web and see if someone is working this way. Our intent is not to do this. Our intent is very clear that whatever you have signed up for you must do it,” he added.

Meanwhile Thierry Delaporte, CEO and MD Wipro clearly stated that having a small side job is fine but working for a company in the same area is an ethical issue. “We are perfectly fine with someone having a little side job here and there. But if you're working for a company that is in our environment, then it's not a legal question but of ethic. We don't believe that it's right to have two jobs, in that case it's a conflict of interest,” he added.