Employee Count Shows Indian IT Biggies Hired Fewer People In March Quarter

Employee addition at leading IT firms TCS, Infosys and Wipro was tepid in the quarter ended March 31 compared to the last eight quarters—a result of the slowdown anticipated because of the coronavirus pandemic.

While market leader TCS showed marginal rise in their employee count in the March quarter, both Infosys and Wipro witnessed drop in their staff base on sequential basis. In Q4 of FY20, the employee count of Infosys dropped by 1,083 employees to 242,371 while Wipro's total headcount fell by 4,432 to 182,886 as compared to third quarter of FY20. Only, market leader Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) saw a net addition of employees at 1,789 to 448,464 as of March 2020.

An analysis of headcount during last eight quarters for all these companies showed that Q4 was one of the lowest as far as net addition was concerned. For instance, Infosys added 906 employees in Q1 of FY20, which is one of the lowest as compared to decline in employee base on sequential basis during the fourth quarter of last fiscal. For Wipro, fall in headcount was the highest in the just-ended quarter as the IT services firm saw dip in employee count by 1,954 in Q4 of FY19.

However, the data showed a slightly different story for TCS as the company added more than 1,700 employees in the March quarter. But, the Mumbai-based IT firm had seen a drop of 4,063 employees in the previous quarter (Q3 of FY20).

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"Usually, companies try to tighten their belts in the fourth quarter of every financial year in their bids to improve efficiency. In that way, that was no different last fiscal. Also, anticipation of slowdown due to COVID-19 crisis has also played some role in hiring," said Aditya Narayan Mishra, director & chief executive officer at CIEL HR Services.

All the top three IT firms have already announced holding back salary increments and promotions to conserve cash as they gear up to battle the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Though all have said they would honour their commitments as far as job offers to lateral and freshers are concerned, but they will go slow on new hiring in Q1 and Q2 of FY21.

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According to HR experts, hiring in the first quarter of current financial year is likely to be around 10-20 per cent less as compared to last year. "While we expect dip in hiring across sectors, IT hiring will depend on how the US recovers from the crisis in coming days. If establishments open up in May in the US, we may see some momentum," said Mishra of CIEL HR Services.

The Indian IT services industry is likely to see a revenue growth of around three per cent in the current financial year as compared to more than seven per cent attained during the last fiscal. While large IT players are relatively better-placed, many mid-tier firms are expected to see contraction in revenues in fiscal.