new delhi apr 14 infrastructure giant larsen toubro lt plans to hire 1500 people this year the same as in previous years a top company official said the companys manpower strength stood at 42924 as on march 31 2018 as compared to 41466 as at march 31 2017 on an average we hire close to 1500 people across functions every year and we see no discontinuity in this practice unless business dynamics change drastically yogi sriram senior vice president corporate hr larsen toubro told sriram added that lts employee attrition rate of around 5 per cent was among the lowest in the industry lt recently made a hostile takeover bid for midsized it services firm mindtree however the companys founders have resisted the unsolicited acquisition bid citing differences in corporate culture and other factors elaborating on lts hr practices sriram said we are putting a greater emphasis on ensuring wider participation of women and frame policies to enable their career growth women employees are not just deployed in it and finance roles but are also present in core engineering jobs like heavy engineering shops construction projects and defence engineering projects he said asked whether there will be job cuts as the company opts for digitisation sriram said there have been no layoffs and the exits were limited to reasons of nonperformance the companys leadership development academy lda at lonavala has been set up for learning interventions he said adding that an artificial intelligence driven digitalised platform called atlnext caters to the learning needs of its workforce business magazine forbes had listed lt among the worlds best employers for 2018 the list based on forbes global 2000 rankings of publicly traded companies in 60 countries placed lt at number 22 making it the highestranked indian firm across all sectors lt has acquired cafe coffee day owner v g siddharthas 2032 per cent stake in mindtree and has also placed an order with brokers to pick up another 15 per cent shares from the open market besides an open offer has been made to buy over 513 crore shares amounting to about 31 per cent stake nam abm