Fired senior employee in 10 minutes, Rishad Premji

A month after disclosing that Wipro had fired 300 employees for moonlighting, its chairman Rishad Premji has informed that his company fired a senior employee in flat 10 minutes for a ‘huge integrity violation’. The employee was one of the top 20 leaders at Wipro. Speaking at the Nasscom Product Conclave in Bengaluru on Wednesday, Premji said that it was an important role that this person played for the organisation “but when the times are tough, and you have to make those tough calls…we made that decision in 10 minutes”.

The chairman of the fourth largest IT firm in the country, however, did not disclose the nature of the violation by the person. He said Wipro values integrity and that the policy on this is black and white for any kind of violation or harassment. “There is a zero-one policy for any form of integrity violation, any form of harassment. You can be me in the company, and I won’t have a job if I violate one of those two,” he said.

“There is a zero-one policy for any form of integrity violation, any form of harassment. You can be me in the company, and I won’t have a job if I violate one of those two,” Premji said.

Premji also recalled an incident when a senior person was fired six-seven years ago for getting someone else to tag in and out for him. He said Wipro found that out and that person got fired effective immediately. This person, the chairman said, was well connected and reached out through every form of medium to put a lot of pressure on the organisation to give him a clean, relieving certificate. “We said we are black and white about this,” he said.

On 21 September, Premji while speaking at an event said that Wipro had sacked 300 employees who were found to be moonlighting. He said these employees who worked with the company were also found to be working for one of its competitors at the same time. Premji said this was “a complete violation of integrity in its deepest form”.

“The reality is that there are people today working for Wipro and working directly for one of our competitors and we have actually discovered 300 people in the last few months who are doing exactly that,” he said.

Premji has taken a very tough stand on moonlighting, a term to describe employees who take up other assignments from a second company while already working for one. “There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating – plain and simple,” he had said in a tweet in August. BusinessToday