Infosys proactively prevents harassment
By Amol Padnekar

In our day to day life most of us come across situations when we want to resist or complain about a certain behavior or incident but helplessly end up succumbing to the situation because we worry about the lengthy, time consuming consequences which might even back fire, let alone guarantee justice .  Infosys has taken a proactive approach on this issue.

In order to ensure that Infosians do not feel the same way, it has set up a department called Ashi which acts faster that any of the known, similar institutions/departments set so far.

Being a new joinee at Infosys, I was interested in exploring everything about Infy that gave it an edge over my previous company and thereby convince myself about my decision to move to Infosys. Frankly, chicks at Infy was also one of the parameters.

In a mail to one of my old friends (Rohit.Shah@infosys.com) and now a new colleague, I described Infy girls in a manner that could be appreciated only by a close friend and it was certainly not professional. Unfortunately, that mail went to one of the senior bosses of Infy, Rohit.Sah@infosys.com (due to typo), who forwarded the mail to ASHI marking a copy to me. Even before I could recollect who/what ASHI was I got a mail from ASHI which read similar to as follows, “Per the following mail, your email etiquette is not up to the mark and elicit serious action. Since you are a new joinee, please take this as the first and last warning at Infosys. A second similar instance might cost you your job at Infosys”.

Later I realized that ASHI which stands for Anti Sexual Harassment Initiative and has been set up by Infosys and its group companies to providing an environment free of unlawful harassment.

This mail certainly changed my outlook towards a professional demeanor and I could easily understand as to why people in Infy are so disciplined and what makes Infy a class apart. A further reflection on the whole incident might want us to ponder over the existence of a similar department out of Infy which might make our country a better place.

Techgoss note:  Quite separate to the above incident, a different Infosys employee Abhinav Viswambharan working in Bangalore has blogged about an innocent mistake and his potential brush with ASHI