Wipro: Building a workplace that works for all

Pandemic or not, what matters most to employees is the culture and values of an organisation and their access to opportunities within the company. And that’s what is driving Indian IT bellwether Wipro, with its global workforce of over 250,000 people. “To define Wipro as I have experienced it—it is a very value-driven, high-integrity, apolitical and informal type of place—where the sky is the limit,” says Saurabh Govil, CHRO of Wipro, who joined the company in 2009. “It’s a place where there’s camaraderie, where you can express yourself, and it is a safe space to raise issues. It’s an organised environment where many people want to work,” he adds.

With the belief that an organisation’s culture can impact its business performance, Wipro practises the values enshrined in its ‘Spirit of Wipro’ and ‘Five Habits’ maxims that include being respectful, responsive, communicatve, and that demonstrate ownership and build trust. And be it inclusion or employee experience, both are prioritised at the workplace.

“Inclusion is a way of life at Wipro,” says Govil. A visible sign of that is the company’s gender diversity at 36.4 per cent currently, which Wipro aims to improve to 40 per cent in the next two years. And to ensure that women can build successful, thriving careers here, its Women of Wipro (WOW) programme supports them at every stage of their lives and careers. Its inclusion initiatives also encompass disability and LGBTQ+ inclusion, race and ethnicity support, along with supplier and generational diversity. “Wiproites can choose to voluntarily declare their gender, sexual orientation and preferred pronouns. They can also declare their same-sex partner under family details. And under our medical insurance policy, employees have the choice to cover their registered partners. In many countries, Wipro’s insurance policy covers gender affirming or transition surgeries and related medical procedures,” explains Govil. Also, the company puts in a lot of effort to break stereotypes, spread awareness about inclusive language and terminologies, and enable Wiproites to become active allies of the LGBTQ+ community.

Apart from ensuring that the company provides an enabling environment for its women, LGBTQ+ and specially abled employees, Wipro tries to design processes and policies where each employee’s experience is at the core. And being an IT company, it has adopted tech-based talent management solutions. For instance, Wiproites can use MyWipro, the company’s in-house app, to access its Performance Nxt programme—that helps them document goals and feedback, and WiLearn—that provides curated content to build the skills required to achieve aspirational goals, develop awareness of unconscious biases, etc. “The AI bot implemented in this [Performance Nxt] enables managers and team members to write quality reviews. It is complemented by the Performance Improvement Plan module that helps employees overcome performance deficits through a rigorous and time-bound action plan,” says Govil. Performance Nxt is supplemented by WiLearn, a learning and development programme. “The focus is on having a balance of byte-sized learning nuggets,” he adds.

Other than focussing on building and sustaining the employee experience, Wipro creates opportunities for its people through training programmes, along with connecting them with mentors and providing other development and growth avenues. And recognising the importance of rewarding those who consistently excel in their roles, the company has a biannual performance review cycle that emphasises ambitious goal-setting.

Wipro provides feedback to its employees in the middle of the year, and performance appraisals are conducted at the end of the year. “Employees can augment these with an array of skills and certifications available on our learning platform. To ensure that talented and capable employees have adequate growth opportunities, we have doubled the frequency of promotions at junior- and mid-levels,” says Govil.

Further, flagship leadership programmes—directed at high-performing and high-potential leaders to enable company-wide transformations—are curated to build and drive personal growth and empower leaders to become custodians of the company’s values and culture. “We also invest in building broader perspectives for all our senior leadership through executive leadership programmes at global institutions such as Chicago Booth, Columbia, Harvard, IMD, INSEAD, MIT, etc.,” says Govil. Based on these aspects, Wipro has emerged as one of the top companies in the BT-Taggd Best Companies to Work For in India ranking this year.

Addressing the elephant in the room in terms of returning to the office, Wipro acknowledges that the future of work is increasingly hybrid and, consequently, it has adopted a flexible approach by keeping the needs of its clients and employees at the centre of its policies. Since late last year, Wipro has kept its offices open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and employees have been voluntarily returning to work. “Our carefully calibrated back-to-office policy is meant to allow employees the flexibility of remote work, while ensuring that our teams can access experiences and opportunities and build meaningful relationships at work,” he says. Touching upon the recent layoffs by tech companies, Govil said that with the fair bit of churn in the industry, layoffs are unnecessary as organisations can manage their efficiencies around it. And being a performance driven organisation, Wipro is doing just that.

@nidhisingal