HCLTech workforce is steadily getting younger even as its overall employee base has remained largely unchanged over the past four years, indicating that hiring has been concentrated at entry levels while the company continues to maintain a lean workforce. According to the IT major’s FY26 annual report, Gen Z employees accounted for 31% of its total headcount of 227,181 at the end of the fiscal year, up from 28% a year earlier and 24% in FY23.
The steady rise in the share of younger employees has come despite little change in the company’s overall workforce. HCLTech ended FY25 with 223,420 employees, of whom 28% belonged to Gen Z. In FY24, the company had 227,481 employees with Gen Z accounting for 27.2% of the workforce, while in FY23 it employed 225,944 people, with the age group representing 24% of the total.
The trend suggests that, barring natural attrition, fresh recruitment has largely been confined to lower levels rather than broad-based workforce expansion. The changing workforce profile is also reflected in HCLTech’s campus hiring strategy. The company recruited 11,744 freshers in FY26 after hiring 7,829 in FY25.
However, the number remains well below the 26,734 freshers it added during the post-pandemic hiring boom in FY23. In comparison, peer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recruited more than 44,000 freshers in FY26, highlighting the differing hiring approaches among the largest IT services companies.
HCLTech had first flagged its increased focus on Gen Z talent in its FY23 annual report. At the time, Chief People Officer Ramachandran Sundararajan said the company had reshaped its talent strategy to suit the expectations of younger employees by shifting skilling towards employee aspirations rather than business requirements and introducing a rules-based internal talent marketplace that allows employees to choose roles and projects aligned with their career goals.
The hiring strategy also coincides with HCLTech’s growing emphasis on productivity. During its June quarter earnings, the company disclosed annualised revenue per employee of $65,500, up 0.7% sequentially and 3.3% year-on-year, signalling that revenue growth is increasingly being achieved without a corresponding increase in workforce. According to an analysis by UnearthIQ, HCLTech recorded the strongest growth in revenue per employee among the large IT services companies in FY26.