India’s techies are leaving IT firms in hordes — Here’s why

• While the demand for IT services companies remains robust with the evolving digital environment, high attrition rates remain a top concern for IT firms.
• TCS, Infosys and Wipro will together hire 1.53 lakh employees in FY22 to hedge against employees leaving.
• Wipro’s attrition rate remains highest at 20.5% followed by Infosys at 20.1% and TCS at 11.9%.

While the demand for information technology (IT) services companies remains robust with the evolving digital environment, a huge number of employees leaving these organisations remain a top concern for IT firms.

Attrition rate of IT companies has been rising consistently and in-line with growing demand for digital talent.

With the earnings results available so far for the September quarter, Wipro has the highest attrition rate, among IT firms, at 20.5% followed by Infosys at 20.1% and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) at 11.9%.

However, a report by human resource solutions firm TeamLease shows that the average attrition rate in the IT industry was at 8.67% in September quarter, far less than what the big IT firms have reported.

One of the key concerns of IT employees for leaving an organisation is muted growth in increments followed by poor employee benefits, rewards, digital skilling and so on, shows a ‘compensation benchmarking survey’ by Deloitte India and software firms’ lobby NASSCOM.

The average increments for the technology services sector in India dropped from 9.5% in 2019 to 5.2% in 2020, which later increased to 8.8% in 2021 due to higher attrition rate. Average increments are expected to go up to 9% to 11% in 2022, said the report.

IT companies are all set to hire in bulk from campuses as they struggle to retain employees with the increasing demand for digital talent.

TCS, which has already hired 43,000 freshers in the first half of FY22, expects to hire another 35,000 in the next six months. This takes up the total count of FY22 to 78,000 new employees.

“We believe this attrition level will continue for the next 2-3 quarters. Having said that, our strong employer brand and our robust talent acquisition and talent development models will help us significantly overcome the supply side issues…We will continue to hire more and more and keep the supply ready since our model is robust. The attrition level is definitely concerning, but we can manage through that,” said Milind Lakkad, global head of human resources at TCS, in a press conference post earnings.

High attrition rate in some of the largest IT companies in the country is expected to continue for the coming quarters and so is the huge hiring process.

“In order to harness the full potential of the market opportunity, we are expanding our college graduates hiring program to close to 45,000 for the year. Simultaneously, we continue to strengthen employee value propositions including health and wellness measures, reskilling programs, appropriate compensation interventions and enhanced career growth opportunities,” said Pravin Rao, chief operating officer at Infosys.

TCS is one of the biggest employers in the country with 5.28 lakh employees as of September quarter.
At 11:12 a.m., on October 14, shares of Wipro were up 7%, Infosys stock was up 2% and TCS stock was down by 0.8%.

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