Rising Attrition Spooks IT Firms, As Demand for Talent Soars

The attrition rate at global IT companies is on a steep rise, with Cognizant alone seeing 93,000 employees resigning over the past 3 months.

The global technology giant, founded by Kenya-born Indian American Francisco D’Souza, says it will hire around 100,000 IT workers by the end of this year.

Accenture, arguably the largest IT services firm, saw its attrition rate leapfrog to 17% in the third quarter of fiscal 2021, up from 11 % in the same quarter last year.

Infosys, India’s IT bellwether, recorded the highest attrition rate of 13.9% in the January-March quarter.

All of them are blaming the high demand for skilled IT talent for the rise in attrition.

In a call with investors last week, Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said: “We continue to take a series of actions to reduce attrition, including compensation adjustments, job rotations, reskilling, and promotions.”

When it comes to attrition, TCS seems to be lucky. The Indian IT services giant saw barely 7% of its employees leave during the first three months of this year. Things were not as rosy at Wipro, whose attrition rate exceeded 15% between April and June this year.

The rising attrition rate is indeed a huge blockade. IT firms are struggling to scale, and the talent crunch will only worsen in the months to come, say analysts.

To weather the looming storm, IT firms are hoping to train young graduates in the job after picking them up on college campuses.

Cognizant, a large majority of whose employees are based in India, says it will hire 30,000 engineering graduates in the South Asian country this year and another 45,000 by the end of 2022.