After slashing salaries, Wipro asks freshers to clear a new test or get terminated: Report

By Team Newsable | First Published Apr 20, 2023, 11:54 AM IST

Information Technology (IT) services firm Wipro has asked its employees, who have joined after completing its velocity training programme – Project Readiness Program – to undergo training again, or face separation, according to various media reports.

To minimise expenses amid layoffs, Indian IT firms are postponing the hiring of new graduates. Wipro, an Indian IT business, has launched the Project Readiness Programme (PRP) for recent graduates who have been waiting for onboarding for more than 15 months. The program ends with a test, and those who do not pass with a score of at least 60 per cent will be terminated. The candidates will have to undergo a PRP assessment test as a part of the training which will have a negative marking of 0.25 per question.

In February, Wipro lowered these freshers' salary from Rs 6.5 lakhs to Rs 3.5 lakhs. One fresher who had already completed a training programme prior to onboarding expressed dissatisfaction with the exam, asking, "If they wanted to test us, why did they hire us in the first place?"

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Wipro declared in February that it will not be delivering the high pay offers to freshers that it had previously promised. The IT behemoth had previously offered an annual salary of Rs 6.5 lakh per annum (LPA) to those who had successfully finished their 'Velocity' training programme.

Instead, the business asked whether they would accept an annual compensation package of Rs 3.5 lakh. These candidates were said to be waiting to be hired. The Bengaluru-based business fired over 450 trainees in January after they regularly failed the company's internal examinations.

Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of the IT employee organisation Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), labelled Wipro's conduct "unethical, unfair, and unjust."

According to industry analysts, IT businesses overhired during the epidemic and are now suffering diminishing demand, resulting in massive bench sizes and a difficulty to onboard freshers

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