Of its 260,000-strong workforce, around 100,000 are new recruits who have joined in the last 30 months, Premji said.
“We have less than 10% of people coming in and we have 30% of our people living in tier II and tier III cities which are their hometowns,” he added, explaining why driving a sense of belonging was a challenge.
“How do you drive that deep sense of connectedness is a big challenge. One of the ways we do it is through sessions…we connect with people by eating out,” Premji said at the Nasscom Product Conclave 2022.
“I’m a big believer that people should come back (to physical offices). All of our people should come back some of the time in some sort of a hybrid model. (This is) because organizations grow when people gossip, connect over coffee, connect over lunch,” the 45-year-old said.
He called this future workplace challenge “quite unique” to the IT industry, while other sectors like manufacturing, consumer products and healthcare have got almost 100% of their workforce to return to offices.
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‘Wipro built on integrity and governance’
On how Wipro survived the testing times and what startups should learn from companies like itself, he said that the Bengaluru-based company was built on a strong foundation of governance and integrity and that shouldn’t be compromised even if performance or growth is impacted.
“You take the tough calls when things are not easy. There was a very senior person…we let a top-20 person in the organization go because there was a huge integrity violation. We made that decision in 10 minutes,” Premji said.
He added that 6-7 years ago the company had fired a senior employee for asking someone else to swipe in and out for attendance.
“This person was well connected and reached out to every form of medium to put a lot of pressure on the organization to give him a clean relieving certificate. And, we said, we are black and white about this,” Premji said, giving these examples to show how Wipro took violations of integrity seriously.
Back to office
ET reported earlier this month that India’s fourth largest IT firm had
sent an advisory to its Indian employees to work from office at least thrice a week starting October 10.
Wipro’s offices will not be open on Wednesdays except for employees who work on critical work.
“We encourage you to work from the office on at least 3 of the 4 days,” the email said. The move will “help us enjoy the camaraderie and team spirit of connecting in person while maintaining hybrid work flexibility”, it said.
