Bengaluru, July 23: Even as IT firms gear up for the economic recovery, they now face an inevitable result of better times — employees leaving for better prospects, which the industry calls as attrition. The first quarter of FY11 has seen employees of three big IT firms — Infosys, TCS and Wipro — leaving in record numbers. Infosys and TCS saw an attrition of 13 per cent during the first quarter while the figure was higher for Wipro at 16 per cent. While the majority leave for more lucrative pay packages the rest leave to further career growth, for personal reasons and higher studies.
While most companies maintain a bench strength of employees who are deployed to new projects, the revival of the job market and pent up demand over the past year has made it difficult for them to cope with the outflow of employees. Infosys lost more people than they had budgeted for in Q1 despite salary hikes of 9-17 per cent from April 1, and enhanced levels of lateral hiring.
Infosys had given employees its bonus shares, which made employees, who had submitted in their resignations, to rethink.
Wipro identified employees with 3-7 years of experience — where attrition is the highest — and given them promotions and salary hikes. It will diversify the staff by promoting more women to senior positions, by increasing the number of local nationals in its overseas operations as well as hiring differently abled people.
While Infosys has revised its upped its hiring guidance from 30,000 to 36,000 this fiscal, Wipro although having made 6,500 campus offers last year to induct students this fiscal. The country’s largest IT firm TCS would offer 40,000 new offers.