European IT and business process services company Steria said on Thursday, it is likely to hand out average wage hikes of 10-12 per cent to its India employees this year.

This matches the average hike given out by the company last year, and also meets the global HR consultancy group Aon Hewitt's recent forecast of about 12 per cent salary increase across the IT and BPO sector, for 2011.

The Paris-headquartered Steria has over 6,000 employees at its development centres in Noida, Chennai, and Pune.

Dr Mukesh Aghi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Steria India, told Business Line that the hike would be announced later this month. At the same time, Dr Aghi said that the company consciously stayed away from giving out hefty and top-of-the-line industry wage hikes.

“While we want to be competitive, our retention strategy goes beyond compensation. Employee retention has a lot to do with work environment, type of projects handled, and the quality of life,” he said adding that to ensure a work-life balance, Steria did not have ‘graveyard shifts' which typically tend to stretch through the night.

Steria will also hire, on a net basis, 2000 professionals here for calendar 2011.

The company provides BPO services, consulting and systems integration, managed services, and application management to companies across public sector, financial services, utilities, manufacturing, and retail verticals.

Offshore centres

Besides India, Steria also has offshore centres in Morocco and Poland.

Last month, the company announced a partnership with Neology to bring RFID solutions to India, with focus on areas such as transportation, vehicle registration, vehicle and people identification, and healthcare.

While Neology brings to the alliance, its technology expertise in integrated circuit design, device development, software integration, Steria will leverage its international experience in carrying out IT deployments for border and passport control, electronic toll collection, traffic management, vehicle registration and healthcare.

“We will also pitch in with our BPO expertise. For instance, in case of RFID deployments for retail industry, we can bring our analytics capability to offer a complete solution to a retail chain,” he said.

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