Wipro has not laid off a single employee and does not plan to lay off any either due to the impact of COVID-19 on the business, the company’s chairman Rishad Premji told shareholders during the company’s 74th Annual General Meeting on Monday, which was held virtually. This is Rishad Premji’s first AGM as Chairman after he took charge in July 2019.
"We have not laid off a single employee as part of the pandemic, we have no plans to lay off anyone. We are driving cost reductions through other means," Rishad reportedly said.
For FY20, the company’s attrition rate stood at 14.7%.
He informed that roughly 93% of the company’s global workforce moved to work from home due to the lockdown. “In these past few months, we have settled well into this new way of working and our focus remains on making our clients successful. I also believe that some of these changes will forever transform how we work in the future,” he said in his opening address.
He told investors during the meeting that they expect the future to be a hybrid model. “We may move to a balance between work from home and work from office. The model will evolve in next 12-18 months,” he said.
He reportedly also addressed concerns regarding the suspension of the H-1B visa by the United States, and said that the move was unfortunate, but said that 70% of the company’s employees in the US were locally hired and hence, the company had de-risked itself. The United States is Wipro’s largest market.
The company has 1,88,270 employees globally as of March 31, 2020.
While announcing its Q4FY20 results, Wipro said that IT services revenues for Q4 were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic by $14-16 million, which makes up 0.7%-0.8% of its revenues. Its net profit for the quarter fell by 6.3%. It also didn’t provide revenue guidance for the quarter ending June 30 citing uncertainty around the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte, in his opening address, said that profitable growth will be the most important priority on his agenda. “We will do everything to regain the momentum in the marketplace. Building on our strong foundation, we will make bold bets and stretch goals. We will aim to drive a high-performance culture even as we steadfastly hold to our cherished values,” he said.
This is also Delaporte’s first AGM address after he took over as the CEO of the IT major last week.