Bengaluru-based information technology firm Wipro hired 14,000 people in the final quarter of last year and is adamant that constraints on the supply side will not dent its current growth momentum.
While there is no doubt 2020 was a challenging year for many companies worldwide, hope is on the horizon as businesses begin seeing growth once again. The most apparent evidence of this can be seen in how many new staff companies, such as Wipro, are hiring.
The company’s Q3 earnings call revealed it had added 14,000 new staff in the final three months of 2020, with 2,900 of those being freshers. Fresher is a term used to describe new employees with very little, or no, previous experience in that business’s industry.
The hiring spree came amid Wipro making significant investments in Europe, America, and Asia. It came with a pledge from chief human resources officer Saurabh Govil that supply-side constraints to their supply chain would not impact growth forecasts. “We will ensure that supply-side we have taken care of all actions that we have a seamless growth in the coming quarters,” he said.
Further, Wipro has a robust hiring plan for the future that includes both freshers and more experienced staff inside India and their offices worldwide. It is part of a plan formed among the top-four IT companies in India, including Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, HCL, Infosys, to hire at least 91,000 employees between them in the coming months.
And the focus on hiring isn’t just in the IT sector either. For instance, a major grocery retailer, Kroger, recently added 2,000 new employees. It is also evident in the iGaming sector, where bet365 created 469 new jobs in 2020. According to the bet365 India review, it is a top brand in the industry with a high reputation.
As one of the primary drivers of new employment, Wipro has also taken on a heavily performance-driven culture to reward hard work and staff that excel at their given role. This includes the introduction of clear, understandable, and achievable performance indicators, so managers and the staff will know where they stand at all times.
According to Govil, both the hiring spree and the shift towards clear and understandable performance goals form a significant part of the restructuring plans announced by Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte in November last year.
“Thierry spoke a lot during an analyst meet about driving performance-driven culture. It is our number one priority from a talent standpoint. Our first step towards that is as we reorganized, our roles have become clearer and accountability has become clearer,” said Govil.
“The focus and our KPIs going forward are individual and team-based with shared goals as well as how Wipro goes and each individual business unit goes. It is all coming together. Our first discussion with the team as we get into fiscal is that they are very excited to see clarity and simplicity of new organization roles that are coming through,” he added.
Among the new roles created and hired by Wipro were a chief growth officer and a significant number of new account executives that will be focused on global accounts to maintain their growth momentum and have a decent shot at even accelerating it.
Wipro is already a significant employer in India with over 190,308 employees, up from 185,243 in September 2020. The company reported $2.7-billion for the quarter ending in December last year, a 3.9% growth from the same period the previous year. The company is also one of the leading contributors to fighting the pandemic in India.