IT & R&D outsourcing services provider MindTree, which had seen a drop in its revenues in the previous quarter, is introducing initiatives to keep the utilisation level high owing to its higher bench strength which has been mounting during the last couple of quarters.
The company plans to double the duration of the training period of the campus recruits to six months, and put the bench resources on internal projects to develop tools and frameworks it generally outsources to other players.
The Bangalore-headquartered company has seen its utilisation drop to about 63-64 per cent from about 70 per cent almost two quarters ago. The present initiatives are expected to keep the company’s utilisation at a healthy rate, on a par with fellow industry players like Wipro and Infosys who have been maintaining a utilisation level of over 75 per cent for the last few quarters.
MindTree presently has over 2,500 people on the bench, a number which is considered quite high considering that the headcount of the company is only about 7,800. With about 250 campus recruits joining in the 2008 batch in March this year and another 250 expected to join during October this year, the number of unutilised resources is expected to go up further.
Keeping this in mind, the company has decided to increase the training period of freshers from the present three months to six months, depending upon the business visibility. During this period, the company will provide training to these employees to multiskill them in different programming languages and technologies, said Puneet Jetli, head, Global People Function, MindTree.
He said the company was putting in place a structure which will see the employees on bench put under ‘identified leadership’ to provide them a ‘rightful direction’. The company is asking the employees on the bench to work in some proof-of-concepts and frameworks, as ‘this is the best time to do so’.
“We always hire based on the business visibility. In the last two quarters while our revenue growth has fallen, the attrition level has also come down in the changed environment as a result of which the bench has gone up. We are keeping the bench engaged by putting them on internal projects to develop platforms and tools, what we traditionally outsource to other vendors,” added Jetli.
MindTree’s utilisation level typically is lower than other industry players like Infosys, TCS and Wipro.
Even though the company is not expecting any ‘dramatic improvement’ in the utilisation level, it is hoping this to improve from the current level as the company is ‘hiring based on the available requirements’ at present.
