This week, major Indian IT firms Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and HCLTech released their Q2 FY24 results. A considerable decline in staff counts was seen across all of these organizations.

TCS

On a quarterly basis, the IT firm reported a net decrease in headcount of 6,333 people. As of September 30, TCS had a net employee headcount of 608,985. In the June quarter, the corporation had 615,318 employees.

On a yearly basis, the IT services firm also saw a decrease in headcount. In Q2FY23, they had 616,171 employees. In Q2FY24, there were 7,186 fewer employees. Milind Lakkad, the company's CHRO, ascribed this to a recalibration of the company's hiring targets.

"Our proactive hiring of bright freshers and investment in training them with the necessary skills is paying off." With that expertise on board and lower attrition, we were able to rebalance our gross additions, keeping them below the departures during the quarter, driving up productivity and improving project results," Lakkad explained.

Infosys

Infosys reported a net decrease in headcount of 7,530 employees sequentially.  According to its quarterly reports, Infosys has 3,28,764 employees as of September 2023. In the preceding quarter, the company employed 3,36,294 people. When compared to the previous quarter, the headcount likewise decreased. The number of employees has decreased by 16,454 year on year.

Infosys has also slowed employment and will not hold big recruiting efforts on Indian college campuses, according to CFO Nilanjan Roy during the post-results news conference. He explained that the company has a large bench size, therefore hiring plans have been put on the back burner. "At this time, the company is not visiting campuses." "We hired 50,000 freshers last year and hired ahead of demand; we still have a significant fresher bench," Roy explained.

HCLTech

HCLTech's net headcount addition fell in line with its peers. In Q2 FY 24, the headcount fell by 2,299 people. The total number of employees at the company was 2,21,139. This is the IT company's second straight quarter of headcount decrease. In the first quarter, the company's personnel had decreased by 2,506.  CEO and MD C Vijayakumar indicated that the company's personnel decreased because freshers on the bench or in training were ready to be assigned to projects. He went on to say, "Our employee count decreased by 1 percent on a sequential basis because we consciously didn't backfill attrition as a lot of freshers we hired in the last 18 months are now ready to be deployed."

Industry Outlook

So far, three big IT businesses have disclosed their results. Aside from financials, Q2 has been a slow quarter for hiring as well. TCS employed 9,840 individuals in the previous quarter, Infosys hired 10,032, and HCLTech hired 8,382 people. These three organisations' aggregate headcount growth was 28,254. In contrast, the net employee addition for all three corporations combined in the September 2023 ending quarter was negative, totaling 16,162.