Wipro Changes HR Policies In Bengal

By Iqbal Ansari

The only Call Centre in Kolkata that handles international inbound calls is shy about publicly revealing its balance sheet. Wipro BPO, which was previously Wipro Spectramind, does not record its annual turnover and profits with the Software Technology Park (STP), Salt Lake, Kolkata, while several of its big and small co-players do. Check out http:// stp-kolkata.com/members.htm

More interestingly, Wipro has changed some its less successful HR policies this year.  Last year, Wipro BPO in Kolkata had implemented a policy which penalised young workers if they left soon after the training period.

For a while in 2005, Wipro BPO made a few of its new recruits agree to a contract that said if these freshers quit before completing a year of service, they would have to pay up a sizeable amount to Wipro BPO. Say, if a fresher drawing Rs 10,000 per month decided to leave after 2 months, he was required to pay up something like Rs 40,000, which was ridiculous and quite impractical to implement. The HR had come up with this 'bright' idea to retain employees in Kolkata. Instead, they've faced attrition up to 40%. Freshers also started refusing to take jobs with such bindings. In any case, it was not possible for Wipro to recover the money as people left on the 1st/2nd of a month after drawing their salaries.  This clause also discouraged prospective recruits; hence the company has discontinued the practice since the beginning of 2006.

Another common gripe against hugely successful and profitable Wipro is that it practises different pay scales for different cities, though several other leading BPO Centres like HSBC do not.