For the first time since 2019, IT services major Wipro reported a year-on-year decrease in its total headcount for the financial year 2024. This downturn aligns with the broader pattern where the company saw a quarterly fall in its workforce across the last five quarters.
As of March 31, the Bengaluru-based company’s total workforce stood at 234,054, marking a decrease of 24,516 employees compared to fiscal 2023. This also marks a stark contradiction to the previous year, where the company had added 15,442 employees and is even steeper compared to the net 45,416 employees in the financial year 2022.
Wipro is not the only IT company whose headcount has fallen. Its peers Infosys and TCS, too, saw fall in its workforces for the first time in two decades.
Meanwhile, Wipros’ attrition rate was flat sequentially at 14.2%. The IT company’s attrition rate in the past quarters has seen a steady decline from its peak of 23.80% observed in the Q4 of fiscal 2022.
Saurabh Govil, chief human resources officer of Wipro said, “Campus hiring is a combination of looking at demand, utilisation and when the hiring is going to happen. We have significantly improved our utilisation this quarter, it’s an all-time high. We hope to increase and sustain that. We have been able to reduce our bench which was there and deploy people faster”.
“The year before last there was a huge demand, so post Covid, we went to the campuses and made a large number of offers. We are still to finish with all those offers. We have promised and we will first ensure all those offers are honoured before we go and hire somebody else. That’s the plan as we move forward,” he added.
On a slightly positive note, the company plans to hire freshers in FY25 but has not decided on the number.