Wipro's hiring will be slower in the coming months and current employees may be asked to go on leave without pay

• Indian IT company Wipro said that it is prepared to “cut costs wherever possible”.
• The company announced that hiring will be slower in the coming months and onboarding has been deferred for the foreseeable future.
• It may also be forced to ask employees to go on leave or cut jobs if things get worse.

Indian IT giant, Wipro, is under pressure from the Coronavirus pandemic. It said that it is prepared to “cut costs wherever possible” after announcing a 5.3% dip in its net profits in Q4.

Hiring will be slower in the coming quarter and any onboarding — which includes campus placements — will be deferred as the company analyses how the current scenario plays out, according to Saurabh Govil, the chief human resources officer at the company.

The total number of employees at the company has already seen a marked decrease. In the fourth quarter, the total headcount stood at 182,886 as compared to 187,318 in the third quarter. Govil attributes the dip to better utilisation.

He stated that around 93% of Wipro’s employees are working from home and its utilisation has increased by 3% — from 70.2% in the third quarter to 73.4% in the fourth. However, this does not rule out the possibility of the company asking some employees to go on leave or even letting them go .

“We will look at if people can go on furloughs and leaves. If sub-contractors can come down and if we can deploy people there. We will have to cut costs wherever possible. These are tough times and we may have to take tough decisions,” Govil told CNBC-TV 18.

What happens to Wipro’s campus placements?
Even though the company did not disclose how many new hires will be caught in the readjustment, the company doubled its hiring in 2019-20. According to reports, Wipro hired nearly 12,000 freshers over the last year and had plans to onboard a similar number in 2021.

However, the Coronavirus outbreak has put a dent in these plans since its impact resulted in budget cuts and a drop in IT spends from its clients.

“We estimate that the IT Services revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 were negatively impacted by COVID-19 by approximately $14 -$16 million,” the company said in a statement.

During the global financial crisis of 2008, onboarding of the graduates from 2008 and 2009 was deferred by as much as eight to 10 months. While some held out, others took up other jobs at startups as at the time because there was no definitive end in sight.

See also:
Wipro takes $14-16 million Covid-19 hit in Q4 skipping guidance and increments