Wipro on Wednesday reiterated that it does not tolerate the idea of moonlighting as it was strictly unethical. “There are contracts and they need to be respected, in particular when people are taking up a job that has a conflict of interest with Wipro’s business,” Thierry Delaporte, CEO and MD, Wipro, said.
Asked if Wipro had introduced new policies to rein in on moonlighting practices, Saurabh Govil, chief human resources officer, said “nothing has changed from the past”.
Some IT companies, including Wipro, have openly opposed the idea of employees moonlighting. Last month, Rishad Premji, chairman, Wipro, had said the company had fired 300 employees after they were found working for competitors.
Wipro also asked its staff to return to the office starting October 10 at least thrice a week. Without revealing what percentage were back in the office, the IT major said its office was open four days a week and “expects the leadership team to come in three days a week”.
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The company further said it had rolled out quarterly promotions in July and also increased salaries, effective September. That likely helped it bring down its trailing twelve month (TTM) attrition rate to 23%, moderating from Q1FY22’s 23.3%. It was, however, up from 20.5%, where it was in the same period last year. It expects its operating margins in Q3FY23 to be impacted from the back-to-back salary increases, while maintaining that for the full year, it expects strong double-digit growth figures.
The company had reported a margin of 15.1% in Q2FY23, up slightly from Q1FY23’s 15%.
“Our margin in Q3 will have some headwinds. That is the impact of two incremental months of salary increases that we have rolled out,” Delaporte said.
Wipro added 605 employees in the three months to September, sharply lower from the 15,446 it added in the June quarter. The Q2FY23 figure was also lower than the 11,457 employees it added in the January-March period.
“In Q1 we had done an exceptional amount of hiring and we did that because we had a huge amount of demand and we knew it would take time before we utilise this talent – that is what we have done in Q2,” Delaporte said.
“We’re also focused on hiring freshers, we have hired several thousands of freshers and will continue to follow this strategy over the coming quarters. There is a certain level of uncertainty but at the same time we have great demand.”
The company said it will continue to leverage the cost advantage that freshers have to support its margins. It further added that it would “honour every offer letter that is rolled out”.
Wipro said it added about 14,000 employees in the first half (H1) of the financial year, which is already 72% of the total number of staff it had hired in the whole of last year.