Wipro to cut 1000 heads for non-performance

New Delhi: Wipro Technologies, an IT solution firm, is screening around 2,400-3000 employees (4-5 percent of the total workforce) on the grounds of non-performance. According to sources, around 1000 employees are being given the pink slips, while about 2000 are allowed to move on.

As per a report in The Economic Times, the company will provide some of the employees with counseling for boosting up their performance. Pratik Kumar, Wipro's Corporate VP (human resources), confirming the move, said, "It's a regular annual exercise. As the appraisal cycle gets over, a multi-layer review happens. Following that, people who have fallen in the lower quadrants of performance are put on watch. Some are asked to pull up and others are asked to move on." It includes all the 60,000 global IT services employees from the senior leadership team down to the person with one-year experience.

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On the number of the employees who had been asked to move on, Kumar said the company did not disclose the number. But it was "significantly lower than 2,000" as company sources said about 1,000 employees were being asked to leave.

The employee base in Wipro has also come down from 62,070 to 61,345, as seen in the quarter ended June. But the company refutes it to be related to the slowdown and rather emphasizes it to be industry driven move. Kumar says, "It's not just our view, but the industry's view, that we have to be thoughtful of additions and drive productivity. We took a closer look at our hiring and realized that we did not need to hire more, since there were people on the bench."

However, the companies who have recently adopted the trend of giving off pink slips at anytime, decline it as a move to push through the slowdown era. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's largest IT services firm, had given pink slips to 500 non-performers. IBM, too, had asked about 700 employees in India to leave, citing non-performance. In July, Patni Computer Systems had shown the door to 400 employees.