ITeS Firms use bench and avoid freshers

The media was continuously talking about the IT employees 'on bench' - the employees who are between projects or those sent for higher training - being laid off. But now reports say that India's $50-billion IT services industry is tapping its staff on bench as they go beyond freezing variable pay, deferring hikes and increasing working hours to cut costs in the face of shrinking global demand, reports The Economic Times.

As a result, in the past few quarters, the industry has managed to avoid almost 60,000 fresh recruits, saving a substantial sum on salary and training.

"In these times you have to keep a hawk's eye on how you use resources. Because of this additional lever (the bench) we could do with fewer hires in the last six months," says Girish Paranjpe, Joint CEO, Wipro Technologies, which has hiked its bench utilization by 4 percent in the last three quarters.

Typically, about 25 percent of the staff in large IT services companies are on the bench, and in the mid-to-small companies, the bench strength is around 12-15 percent. "We would like to keep our utilization in the 77-79 percent range. Bench is strategic to the business pipeline of the company. However, higher utilization is always welcome and we look at ways to enhance utilization levels. Though, when we say that we are fine with a 77-79 percent range, it does not mean that we don't want it to go further up,'' says Ajoy Mukherjee, VP & Head, Global HR, TCS, India's largest IT company.

According to industry estimates, bench utilization has gone up by around 3.5 percent in recent times. Wipro's bench use is up 4 percent, TCS is up 3 percent while mid-tier companies such as Hexaware Technologies have increased bench use by almost 8 percent and Patni Computer Systems by around 6 percent.