Wipro attrition zooms to 16 p.c in Q1

BANGALORE: As in case of Infosys Technologies, the attrition rate of India's third largest IT bellwether Wipro too jumped to 15.8 per cent during the first quarter (April-June) of this fiscal (2010-11) from 9.8 per cent in like period year ago (2009-10) and 12.1 per cent quarter ago.

As a result, net addition for the company's flagship IT services business was 4,854 people in the quarter under review as against 3,725 in the previous quarter (Jan-March) of last fiscal (FY 2010) and minus 735 a year ago.

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"Overall demand for IT skills has gone up with a rebound in the economy and uptake in tech spending. The attrition has gone up also due to many employees leaving for higher studies or business schools," Wipro Executive Director Suresh Senapaty told IANS here Friday.

On a quarterly basis, the voluntary attrition rate shot up to a whopping 23 percent as against 8.4 percent year ago and 17 percent quarter ago.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services alone accounted for 16 percent of the attrition as against 14 percent a year ago and 17 percent a quarter ago.

The total number of employees in the firm's IT services business has increased to 112,925 at the end of June from 108,071 quarter ago (March-end) and 98,521 year ago.

Involuntary attrition, however, declined sharply by 1.4 percent from 7.7 percent year ago and 2.1 percent quarter ago.

"Our net utilisation of employees during the quarter was 78.4 percent as against 77.1 percent year ago but marginally down from 79.3 percent quarter ago," Senapaty added.

Earlier, Infosys July 13 admitted that its attrition rate increased to around 16 percent from 11.1 percent year ago and 13.4 percent quarter ago.