IT behemoth Wipro with an employee base of 1,75,000 is planning to release bonus payments to its employees at the bottom of the ladder, typically, those who had been recruited from campuses and have spent one to five years with the company. The purpose of this bonus payment is reported to be to check the high level of attrition witnessed in this segment of the employees. This will be a one-off payment but these employees can expect to receive their annual salary increases, which happen every June. The levels chosen for this bonus payment are said to be B1 and B2.
The company is looking at rewarding those employees who have been able to acquire skill sets in some of the business areas like digital and cloud, which seem to be doing well, as compared to some of the other areas that are not attracting much new clientele for various reasons.
Interestingly, it is not Wipro alone doing which is doing this. Rivals Infosys and HCL Technologies and possibly other IT companies are also keen on retaining employees who are useful to the business since it is a common problem. A majority of employees leave one of these companies to join another. Now with this bonus payment, Wipro is insisting on the employees signing an agreement not to leave the company at least till 2020.
The same report speaks of how Infosys addresses this attrition issue. Employees with the potential to learn the new and necessary skills are allowed to do so and if they successfully complete the transformation, they are assured of double their salary. They become consultants and are then assigned on projects.
The attrition rate faced by these companies is close to 20%. Typically, salary levels in these positions are not very substantial and they would switch companies for even small increases offered by the other employer.
Considering that, these companies find themselves in a piquant situation, where they may not have adequate staff trained in domains where business is coming from, while the others are just warming the benches where there are not many orders from clients. Under the circumstances, these incentives to retain available talent are understandable.
The companies have already spent huge amounts in training their manpower and letting them go can be painful.