Cognizant has revealed that it will hire approximately 100,000 laterals in 2021 and train close to 100,000 associates in 2021.
In addition, Cognizant expects to onboard approximately 30,000 new graduates in 2021 and make 45,000 offers to new graduates in India for 2022 onboarding.
The IT services company had more than 300,000 employees at the end of the June quarter.
“We continue to take a series of actions to reduce attrition, including compensation adjustments, job rotations, re-skilling and promotions and a host of associated engagement activities,” Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said.
Cognizant is experiencing attrition that is primarily in the more junior levels of the organization or mid-levels in India.
“India is one of the hottest markets we’ve seen or our team has seen over the last 10-plus years. Annual merit-based salary increases have been announced here in the last few weeks. That’s on top of a whole host of ad hoc measures we played through in the course of the last year: out-of-cycle increases, promotion, retention dollars,” he said.
Cognizant announced a shift in the last few months to quarterly promotion cycles for billable resources as well as fast-tracked job rotations and re-skilling initiatives across the organization.
Cognizant’s revenue rose 14.6 percent at USD 4.6 billion in the quarter, from USD 4 billion in the year-ago period. This is higher than the company’s guidance of 10.5-11.5 percent revenue growth for the June 2021 quarter.
Cognizant — which has about 2 lakh employees based in India — follows January-December as financial year.