Wipro embarks on re-skilling initiative

In an effort to re-skill its employees, Wipro has launched a new initiative called Newton’s Cradle, as it seeks to help employees sharpen their skills.

The Newton’s Cradle programme will be extended to employees working in the B3 band, who have above 5 years of work experience, generally performing roles such as team lead, manager or architects.

Further, as part of this initiative, the company is in the process of identifying employees to be part of this programme.

When contacted, a Wipro spokesperson said that the initiative is aimed at training employees in digital technologies and equipping them with the skill set necessary to help them grow.

The selected employees will be released from existing projects, and will be re-trained, so that they could be redeployed in higher value projects, said the spokesperson.

The released employees from the projects will be replaced by others in the organisation, the spokesperson added.

This project is spearheaded by Rajeev Mendiratta, V-P and head of workforce management, a Wipro veteran.

Wipro did not give out the number of people who will be trained, but employees whom BusinessLine spoke to estimate it could be 10 per cent of the workforce. The $146-billion IT industry is seeing a tectonic shift in the way technologies are changing, the way they do business, and in clients demanding different kinds of skill set as compared to the past.

As a result of these changes, there is an emphasis on acquiring different programming skills. An employee needs to have multiple skills as 10-15 per cent of IT jobs will become obselete in the next few years, said Kunal Sen, Senior Vice-President at TeamLease Services.

“Our customer projects increasingly require talent with higher end skills and varied experiences to do projects in digital – including analytics, big data, cloud, Artificial Intelligence, robotics and social media,” the Wipro spokesperson said.

“Companies can price higher with a better profile skill set, as job roles are getting sophisticated. This explains why firms are focussing on re-skilling their mid-level employees to remain relevant for their newer service offerings,” said Siddarth Bharwani, Director at Jetking.

Company sources pointed out that the rationale for this programme has a lot to do with promoting talent from within.

“Instead of hiring laterally, which adds to the overall cost, we have been asked to acquire different skill sets, all of which will be assessed on a quarterly basis and also reflect in the performance appraisal,” said a Wipro employee.

Infosys too has embarked on an organisation-wide re-skilling initiative around concepts like design thinking, which according to CEO Vishal Sikka, can alter the profile of work done by Indian IT services companies.

COMMENT NOW