Wipro all ears on employee blogs

BANGALORE, INDIA: It came as no surprise when the Wipro management stated at the announcement of its first quarter results on Wednesday that it paid heed to the views, observations and complaints of its employees. Every organization claims to do the same, after all.

What was different, though, was that the company with a major IT presence gets an informal, indirect feedback from them on microblogging sites. “We are listening to our people, even on blogs. As far as the attrition is concerned, this quarter (Q2) should be certainly better than the last one (Q1),” said T.K. Kurien, executive director and chief executive officer, IT Business, Wipro.

Self-admittedly, the company doesn’t seem too keen on assessing employee satisfaction through any indices. A senior official even said that grading the satisfaction level of employees on a scale of one to ten was not their cup of tea.

“We may not have calculated the employee satisfaction index… but channels of communication are fairly ongoing,” said Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president, Human Resources.

The constant increase in attrition over the last quarters, and especially the first quarter this year, according to Kumar, could not raise eyebrows as the company had guided the figures last year itself. For the first quarter of FY 2011-12, the attrition rate is 23.2 per cent, as against 23 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year.

“There is no change in the pattern. There are many who opt for higher studies, especially during this period. We don’t monkey around with these figures. We give it as it is,” asserted Kumar.

Unsurprisingly, again, many IT majors are attributing the same as a major reason for the rise in their attrition rates.