Wipro to hike salaries by up to 15%

The country's third largestsoftware exporter Wipro said it will hike salaries forits employees in India by 12-15 per cent as it looks tocounter high attrition.

The wage hike, effective June 1, will be to the tune of2-4 per cent for onsite staff (at the customer site).

Announcing Q4 2010-11 results, the company said wage hikewill impact its operating margins in the first quarter thisfiscal.

Wipro, which has been competing with domestic and globalrivals like Tata Consultancy Services and IBM, has witnessedhigh levels of attrition over the last few quarters.

"We have announced wage hikes effective June 1, 2011,which would have an impact on the operating margins... It willbe 12-15 per cent for offshore and 2-4 per cent for onsiteemployees," Wipro Executive Director and Chief FinancialOfficer Suresh Senapaty said.

Wipro added 2,894 people in the IT services verticalduring the quarter ended March 31, 2011, and 14,314 peopleduring the year. It had 1,22,385 employees as of March 31,2011.

"Is it (attrition rate) comfortable, it is not... However, we have been able to bring down the attrition throughthe year. When you go back a couple of quarters, we were at alevel which was north of 23.5 per cent and from there, we havebeen able to bring it closer to about 20 per cent," WiproHuman Resources Vice-President Pratik Kumar said.

Kumar added that voluntary attrition came down to 20.9per cent in Q4, FY'11, from 21.7 per cent in the precedingquarter.

Rival TCS had said it plans to hike wages by 12-14 percent for India-based employees this fiscal.

Wipro today posted muted fourth quarterly numbers. Whileits consolidated net profit grew 13.77 per cent to Rs 1,375.4crore in Q4 FY'11, net income from sales increased 18.33 percent to Rs 8,302.4 crore.

For the fiscal ended March, 2011, Wipro registered 15.34per cent growth in net profit at Rs 5,297.7 crore, while netincome from sales in 2010-11 fiscal grew 14.51 per cent to Rs31,098.7 crore.