How Wipro does it?

NEW DELHI: Wipro started doing this a year back. Called People Pulse, the people tracker colour-codes every Wipro employee — red, amber and green. Red means highly likely to leave. Amber is the middle zone, and green the ones who are most unlikely to leave. They are tracked all the time. The colour zone helps the company focus on them better. Those in the high-risk zone, red, are under constant watch.

Any flipping on deadline, more leave applications and shirking of new projects are warning signals that the HR antenna promptly captures. “This has helped us forecast how our employees are going to behave, track attrition and better manage it by timely interventions,” says Prateek Kumar, HR head, Wipro Technologies.

Since its launch, the attrition forecast, with an error margin of 2%, has been fairly accurate. Attrition happened mostly in the red zone, for which it is well prepared. It is also given high priority — any expression to quit at the manager’s level or above will be flashed right up to the top at Wipro, he says.

The forecasting of attrition and talent requirement is done three months in advance and is revisited every month. Every employee at Wipro is mapped and his future growth path is identified fairly soon. The best managers are recognised with RSUs and special assignments. ‘An evening with Azim Premji’ is another way of making them feel special.