Wipro's CFO Says 90% Of New Hires Agree To Join At Half The Salary

Indian multinational corporation Wipro has announced a 50% pay cut for some of its senior-level employees due to the economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This move has caused concern among new joiners and their salaries, with many wondering if they too will be affected by this decision.

Wipro, an IT company, reduced its salary offers by half to candidates several months ago. According to CFO Jatin Dalal, more than 90% of the newly recruited employees agreed to the lowered compensation and joined the company. This decision was made to expedite the onboarding process.

Wipro reached out to people who had received a previous job offer of Rs 6.5 lakh per annum (LPA) in february and inquired whether they would prefer an offer of Rs 3.5 LPA as their annual compensation. The company assured those who opted for the lower income option an "early joining" in an email. The employees' union NITES criticized Wipro's move as "unfair" and "unacceptable."

The demand climate is dynamic, and we will continue to hire based on demand, President and Chief HR Officer Saurabh Govil stated in a post-earnings news conference last week. We must use our inventory more efficiently. We need to take into account the entire supply chain when making decisions about future employment. We will keep on hiring as the economy grows and becomes stronger. He continued by saying that Wipro hired around 5,000 people, mostly engineers, in the most recent quarter.

On the decline in headcount in Q4 FY23, Thierry Delaporte, CEO and managing director of Wipro, said, "There is a danger of looking at headcount on a quarterly basis. Three-four quarters ago, we had a large increase in headcount and lowering our utilisations, impacting our margin... On a quarterly basis, you can't see this impact. We will continue to hire. Also, attrition is going down, we need to take that also into account."
With a voluntary attrition rate of 14.1% on a quarterly annualised basis and 19.2% on a trailing 12-month basis for the quarter ending in March 2023, Wipro saw a 330 basis point drop from the previous quarter.

In a statement released this week, Wipro stated that its net profit for the three months ending in March 2023 was Rs 3,074.5 crore, or about the same as the Rs 3,087.3 crore reported for the same period the previous year. To the contrary, it saw an increase in operating revenue of 11.17 percent from January to March of last year to Rs 23,190.3 crore from Rs 20,860 crore. A portion of the net profit will be distributed to the company's stockholders.