
IT major HCL Technologies’ twelve-month attrition rose to 21.9% at the end of financial year 2021-22 from 19.8% as of December 2021, according to results announced on Thursday, reflecting a trend of 20%-plus attrition seen across the software industry amid a continuing war for technology talent.
The Noida-based firm’s attrition has risen steadily over the past financial year, just like its peers, with the increased lateral hiring to fill the gap exerting pressure on the margins. “The cost of talent went up significantly. It was the biggest trigger for reduction in margins…We are increasing the catchment areas for talent into Latin America, Europe and even some interesting locations emerging in APAC,” said MD & CEO C Vijaykumar.
“We have new frontier locations globally Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Romania, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil and our acceleration there is increasing by the day. We have really spread our sourcing channels to where talent is available,” said CHRO VV Apparao.
Vijaykumar said they are focussing on increasing fresher hiring to address the demand-supply gap. “Towards the second half of FY23, we expect the situation to stabilise.”
HCL added 38,615 technical employees on a net basis over the past financial year, taking the total head count to 208,877 employees (of which 195,195 are technical employees) as of March 31, 2022. The company hired nearly 23,000 freshers in FY22 and its Apparao said they expect a more than 50% increase in fresher intake in FY23.
Further, the company is also looking at making significant investments in upskilling their talent base, the management said. “In spite of these efforts, we do realise that there is still a lot of gap in talent. So, our training efforts have increased manifold in the last couple of years,” said Apparao, adding that the firm provided 8.3 million hours of training year-on-year and it is helping with internal deployment. “We are definitely seeing attrition stabilising, if not declining. We do expect see it to come down.”
On the return-to-office trend, Apparao said footfalls are increasing. “We are at 12-15% on any given day in terms of people coming to offices. Unique employees are closer to 50%. We do see that it is going to be a hybrid work environment for a little while. We are monitoring the situation.”
The firm reported consolidated net profit of Rs 3,593 crore for the March quarter, up 226% from a year ago. The net profit was Rs 1,102 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous financial year. However, the profit rose 24% after excluding the impact of one-time milestone paid bonus to employees and the DTL on goodwill expense last year. Revenue from operations rose 15% to Rs 22,597 crore for the March quarter.
For the full financial year 2021-22, profit after tax rose 21.1 per cent to Rs 13,499 crore from Rs 11,145 crore in the previous financial year. Consolidated revenues rose 13.6 percent to Rs 85,651 crore from Rs 75,379 crore in FY21.
For FY23, the company has given a margin guidance of 18-20 per cent, while the revenue is expected to grow between 12 per cent to 14 per cent in constant currency terms.