Wipro has deferred its wage hike cycle to the third quarter of the fiscal year instead of paying the hike in September like last year.
“We did our last salary increase in September of last year, and we plan to do that for this year sometime in quarter three,” Chief Financial Officer Jatin Dalal said.
Margins
This comes at a time when the company is looking to defend margins and save on wage bills, the former being a particular concern.
It has said the margins will remain in a similar range even as it plans to hand out pay raises in Q3.
Q1 FY24
Wipro reported a 11.95 per cent year-on-year (YoY) rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,870.1 crore compared with Rs 2,563.60 crore in the same quarter last year.
Revenue for the quarter rose 6.04 per cent YoY to Rs 22,831 crore.
Payout
The company will pay out 80 percent of the variable pay for Q1 to junior level employees whose payout is linked to the company’s performance.
For managers and above, the variable payout will depend on the performance of the business unit they are part of.
Wipro’s Chief Human Resources Officer Saurabh Govil said, “Our variable pay will be around 80% in Q1 in spite of this environment. We will continue to do what is required for our employees but continue to calibrate with the business requirement.”
Fresher onboarding
The aforementioned ‘business requirement’ is also why the firm has not onboarded all the freshers it recruited last year yet.
It did not conduct a campus drive in the current fiscal, and it did not onboard any fresher in Q1, said Govil, “So we will again calibrate (hiring demand) based on demand. Today we have capacity.”
It did not disclose its hiring targets either, and ended the quarter with 8,812 fewer employees.
Rivals
Rival Infosys has also postponed its hike since it has not paid it as per its usual April cycle for junior employees.
HCLTech will defer hikes to junior and mid-level employees by a quarter and skip the compensation review for the management layer and above this year.
Its leadership said that the latter makes up a significant portion of the wage bill.
Promotion
Govil said the company is continuing to carry out its quarterly promotion cycles — that it did so in Q1 and will do so in Q2.
Dip in headcount, attrition
Wipro reported an 8,812 dip in headcount to take its total headcount to 249,758 during the first quarter (Q1) of FY24.
Meanwhile, attrition for Q1 stood at an eight-quarter low of 17.3% compared to 19.4% in the March quarter.
