15% HCL Employees Resigned In 90 Days; HCL Offers Share Ownership For 3000 Employees To Stop Attrition

HCL Tech has introduced a Restricted Stock Units (RSU) policy in a bid to attract and retain top talent.

New Compensation Structure

Its existing long-term incentive programme will now include RSU grants as part of the compensation mix.

The compensation mix which was 100% cash earlier will now change to a mix of 70% cash, 30% RSUs for the grants it will offer later this calendar year.

The policy will cover almost 3,000 senior leaders which would help retain them.

Earlier, 1,000 senior executives were covered under the plan.

How It Will Work

The move comes at a time when the IT industry is facing a supply crunch when it comes to people skilled in new technologies.

It is pending shareholder approval and should they approve it, 11.1 million shares (equal to less than .50% of the company’s equity shares) will be allocated to 3,000 senior leaders.

The plans will be offered as tenure-based vesting by FY2025 and the company has also proposed an option to substitute this part of the plan with RSUs that vest based on achievement of long-term performance targets.

Rewarding Senior Talent For Growth

CEO and Managing Director C Vijayakumar said of the proposal that as the company is experiencing “strong growth momentum”, it is going to “extend long term wealth creation opportunities in the form of RSUs for a greater number of senior leaders”.

VV Apparao, chief human resources office, said that the policy was formulated after “conducting market research on the top talent hiring metrics”.

Structure

It revealed “wealth creation / liquidity offerings as a huge draw to attract the talent through stock ownerships.” 

The program is structured to ensure there is no equity dilution for existing shareholders .

The total plan investment will not be impacted by the move from all cash to cash plus RSUs.

Additional Incentives And Hiring

Wage hikes were announced for the top leadership effective October 1. 

Junior level employees are set to receive promotions or incentives.

Meanwhile, the company’s hiring program continued steadily with a net addition of 11,135 people during the quarter.

This is the highest in the last 24 quarters. 

Of these, 5,779 were freshers, a jump from the 3,444 added last quarter.
It expects to meet or surpass the 20,000-22,000-freshers target in FY22.