AI productivity gains reflecting in salaries would take another 12 months: Wipro's Jasjit Kang

Wipro's Jasjit Kang says broad productivity improvements remain elusive as the company looks for stronger AI, problem-solving and learning skills in new hires.

Productivity gains in work from artificial intelligence (AI) integration is a conversation that can be visited 12 months from now, suggests Jasjit Kang, managing partner and global head, Business Process Services at Wipro, as improvement across the board is yet to be seen.

"I don't think we've seen the kind of productivity improvement yet across the board. Entry level, yes, there are certain parts," Kang told The Economic Times Digital during Nasscom's BPM Confluence.

Employees with the right skills can move into roles that command higher salaries, Kang said, but the debate over pay also rests on how much work they produce and the effort they put in.

He added: "If you're very good at using AI technology, you understand prompt engineering, you understand the business context really well, you have the right to become an FDE [forward deployed engineer]. And if you become an FDE, obviously, you earn more money. Within your work context, if you're doing more today, the question to ask is, are you putting in more effort? Are you putting in less effort? So what should people get paid more for, more effort or less effort?"

Kang warned that organisations must distinguish the productivity that AI tools deliver from the value individual employees bring. Higher pay makes sense when employees take on more complex work and greater risk, he said. If they complete the same tasks with less effort, the technology does the heavy lifting, he added.

Kang also flagged resistance to returning to the office, particularly among younger employees accustomed to working from home, as a major operational challenge.

"We fundamentally feel if you don't come into the office at least three times a week, you will not have any association with the brand you're working with. I think creative thinking happens when you're sitting in a group," he noted.

Different skill mix for entry-level rolesWipro continues to hire for entry-level roles in its business process services and business process management (BPS/BPM) division, though Kang said it now looks for a different mix of skills than it did earlier.

"I don't think entry-level hiring is stalling... it is still happening. Entry-level skill requirements are changing. At least in our company we are still hiring freshers. But we look for a different skill set and skill mix now," Kang told The Economic Times Digital.

These skills include familiarity and comfort with AI tools, problem-solving ability and the ability to learn quickly, he said.

However, Kang expects AI to replace 15-20% of jobs in Wipro's BPS/BPM division, mainly in entry-level voice processes that involve handling customer calls. The division employs more than 80,000 people, he said.

So, what exactly will AI replace?Kang identified two areas where AI would take over first: routine customer queries, such as checking bank balances or requesting a fresh chequebook, and data entry, such as updating a client's address or other personal information. He claimed "AI can do them with 100% accuracy".

Explaining how roles would change, he said: "These will be replaced with more complex interactions that either sit with the client or require an elevated skill level and services for a client that has launched a new set of services. So that is where we take the same set of people, reskill them and get them ready for the more complex processes."

As the work becomes more complex, Kang put the proficiency now required in Wipro's BPS/BPM division at 6-7 on a scale of 10, up from 4-5 earlier.

Newer business verticals, newer rolesWipro is also looking to expand its BPS/BPM business in areas that previously contributed little or no revenue, including drones used in e-commerce; autonomous cars and pharmaceuticals and life sciences, Kang said.

Kang said Wipro started supporting one of its large autonomous car clients three years ago with a team of 12 people. "That business has grown exponentially. We have more than 1500 people deployed today."

In pharmaceuticals and life sciences, Kang said, AI is expanding the market for business process outsourcing (BPO) and opening up more work for Wipro. "These were areas which BPO would not talk about earlier. Today we are in the middle of conversations with life sciences and pharma companies, telling them how we can support them."

"Preparing the documentation for drug approvals used to take years. With AI, we can now do it in days, or weeks at most. If clients can turn this around faster, they can take the drug to market faster, which means revenue and getting ahead of their competition," he elaborated.

Kang said Wipro has implemented an AI solution for a pharmaceutical client but declined to name it.

As opportunities in these areas grow, Wipro now deploys large teams for such clients, moving beyond the smaller teams that previously handled fewer transactions, Kang said.

Kang expects work in these newer areas to replace routine contact centre jobs. "These new services requiring a high degree of skill and knowledge are what is going to come into play, and will replace the existing jobs," he added.

Wipro is also bringing in talent for project-based roles to meet demand from customers in newer markets and wants to create a gig platform, Kang said.

He cited helping clients improve large language models (LLMs) as one such opportunity that could call for specialists with specific academic backgrounds.

He said: "There might be a demand from one of our customers to help them improve their LLM, right? So they need PhDs in European history, for example. We're not going to hire them. We will create a gig platform on which these people will enroll. We will enable them on a client's platform, and then they will help them improve their LLM on European history just as a specialty specific topic."

Kang said companies should focus on finding the best talent anywhere in the world, without necessarily hiring those specialists as employees.

"The pace at which things are moving around us, you can't always start building skills from the ground up, because by the time you'll be ready, the next solution would have come into play. So the best way to do it is, think about picking the best talent, enabling that," he said.