Building Sense Of Connectedness To Employees Is Challenging, Says Rishad Premji Commenting on the entrepreneurs' obsession over unicorn status, Wipro chairman said that the founders should focus on building valuable business rather than the valuation
By Teena Jose
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Wipro executive chairman Rishad Premji, while addressing the Nasscom Product Conclave 2022, has said that IT companies are currently facing a huge challenge in building a sense of connectedness between their employees and the organization.
While explaining why it is a challenge, Premji said that, "Of its 260,000 strong workforce, around 100,000 are new recruits who have joined in the last 30 months. We have less than 10 per cent of people coming in and we have 30 per cent of our people living in tier II and tier III cities which are their hometowns. How do you drive that deep sense of connectedness is a big challenge. One of the ways we do it is through sessions; we connect with people by eating out."
Premji was the one who brought up the issue of moonlighting into limelight by tweeting that it is cheating and unethical. As an aftermath to his statement, many companies took a stand on moonlighting and employee layoffs were also happened. Weeks after disclosing the Wipro's employees firing, Premji disclosed that the software services firm fired one of its top 20 leaders ten minutes after he was found to have committed a huge integrity violation.
"We made that decision in 10 minutes. It was an important role that this person ran for the organization but when the times are rough, and you have to make those tough calls," said Premji.
Commenting on the entrepreneurs' obsession over unicorn status, Wipro chairman said that the founders should focus on building valuable business rather than the valuation.
"I find this such an obsession today on unicorn status and how much is your valuation. The reality is that the journey to build sustainable businesses is long, it's complex. It slows at times. And if your journey is to make money quickly, the kind of organization you will build will be very different than an organization that you want to last. I think it's incredibly important to think about valuable business versus valuations every time," said Premji.
