'There's no end to higher salaries'

BANGALORE: Handling a workforce of over 60,000 in today���s hyper-growth environment is not an easy task. ET caught up with Pratik Kumar, Corporate V-P, HR, Wipro, to understand how Wipro keeps attrition in control, manages aspirations of employees and keeps the high performers from jumping the ship. Excerpts:

Each year you add about 15,000 employees, how do you keep the culture of the organisation intact? If I am employee No 59,000 what am I going to experience?

As we grow, we atomise and splinter the firm into smaller groups. The moment we reach a certain size ($80-90 million), we break that unit. We make the newcomer feel his or her aspirations belongs to that group. If you ask youngsters who is their top management they will say ���my manager���.

It is not AHP (Azim H Premji, chairman) or Pratik Kumar. Secondly, we over communicate. Right from AHP downwards, anytime we know there are 40 or more people in the learning centre, we find an excuse to drop in and launch into Q&A. AHP communicates the most; he mingles around and joins groups.

For young people it takes a long time to relate to the company and many grow restless... How do you address that?

The biggest killer is when you make youngsters, who join with a lot of hope and aspirations, sit idle. We come down hard on groups who have asked for resources and are not utilising them.

You are growing at over 40%. Is there enough depth to manage that growth?

The middle layer talent is the most critical. If we do not have that layer it will come in the way of our ability to hire at the junior level. There is a huge focus in creating that cadre (five-seven years of experience).

Every manager goes through rigorous training for six months. If they don���t complete the certification process; they lose their right to continue as project managers.

You have brought down attrition, but at 16% isn���t it still high?

It has seen improvement but we need to bring it down. Some MNCs pay high salaries but have higher attrition than us, which goes to prove that there is no end to higher salaries.

If you can show someone a path that will make him believe that it is worth investing in the company for the next few years, he is happy to stay back. Some churn is healthy; 10-12% attrition is comfortable.

You haven���t made too many millionaires in the company, or at least it���s not talked about outside. Compared to your peers you could have been more generous with your stock plans?

We live in a society where there is so much disparity, is it good to talk about how many millionaires we make? We have one of the most aggressive wealth creation tools (RSUs: restricted stock units) which no one in the industry is using.

Last year, we gave out shares worth Rs 640 crore, before that we gave Rs 400 crore. The scheme covers 5,000 managers. People who are covered under RSUs, the attrition is zero.

Wipro is running like a federation, you don���t have a CEO. Are you afraid to bring in another outsider and upset the apple cart?

Why do you say that? AHP is CEO; we don���t feel the need for hiring a CEO. Our next generation of leaders have emerged and are leading the show. We have brought people from outside. The tenure of today���s CEO in the US is not more than 1.5 years, our CEOs have stayed longer than that.

If there is no CEO position available, then what are the aspirations of a division head?

Each of our division heads is leading a business the size of individual companies, what more could they be looking at? We have marched ahead over the last two-three years, proving our sceptics wrong. It is making a lot of other firms think whether there is merit in this structure.

What about succession planning? Who will succeed Mr Premji?

We have a succession plan, but why should we talk about it? We have said many times as a process we have it in place, why should we be more specific than that?

(Every Tuesday, People Pulse will throw light on the people issues companies are dealing with. Send your comments to peoplepulse@indiatimes.com