Wipro imposes test to eliminate freshers

Indian IT giant Wipro has imposed a new training, which ends with a test and possible elimination, on freshers who have been awaiting onboarding at the company for over 15 months now, Business Today learned from top sources. This development comes after Wipro slashed the salaries of these freshers to Rs 3.5 lakhs from Rs 6.5 lakhs in February.

Interestingly, these freshers have already completed a training while awaiting onboarding.

One of the impacted job claimants told Business Today, “I got my offer letter in November 2021, then I underwent Velocity training after which my offer was bumped to Rs 6.5 lakhs. After waiting for over one year in February they sent me offer to join for half salary, which I accepted since I had wasted so much time. Now they are again imposing PRP training which will end with a test and elimination chance.”

The instructions sent to fresher job claimants mentioned that if the employees do not clear the PRP training, which stands for Project Readiness Program, with an overall score of at least 60 per cent, they will be terminated immediately.

The company responded to Business Today’s queries in a statement.

“At Wipro we place immense value on seeing our talent grow and succeed. The Project Readiness Program is a part of our routine onboarding process and is designed to ensure that our next gen associates are assigned to the right client projects and have the most up-to-date skillset to make an immediate impact,” Wipro said,

Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of the IT employee union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) noted that these developments taken by the IT major are “unethical, unfair and unjust.”

“Wipro’s actions towards its fresher employees are unethical, unfair and unjust. The company’s misleading communication and sudden changes in policy have put the future of these employees at risk,” Saluja said.

Another job claimant Business Today spoke to said that they believe that this is the company’s attempt at reducing their liabilities towards fresher employees since thousands of them have been waiting for onboarding at the company for over 15 months now.

“They just want to put us in the system once and take us out of it so that they have no liability. Thousands of freshers wasted precious time of our career because we wanted to join Wipro but they are playing with our careers now. If they wanted to test us, why did they hire us in the first place? They hired us after all due process, interviews, programming tests, etc. And now why are they testing us again and again?” the job claimant exclaimed.

Wipro is not the only company that has introduced a training with a possibility of elimination if not successfully cleared on fresher job claimants. Similar training was introduced by IT services company LTI Mindtree a few weeks ago, post which job claimants could be eliminated if they do not clear the tests with required marks.

An industry insider told Business Today on the condition of anonymity that these steps are taken since IT companies over-hired during the pandemic and are now facing dwindling demand along with huge bench sizes, because of which they are unable to indulge the freshers awaiting onboarding.

Business Today has reported previously about the delay in onboarding at major Indian IT firms. Due to the increase in digitisation demands during the pandemic, the demand for IT services went up because of which companies started hiring more. But because of the macroeconomic downtrends since the beginning of 2022, the demand for IT services has fallen which has led to headwinds for the IT industry. BusinessToday