How Infy managed 5000 resignations
By Onlooker

Indian tech major Infosys was started in 1981 by seven people with US $250.  Today, Infosys (aka Infy) has grown into a US $4.8 billion company, with a large team of around 114,000 employees as on March 31, 2010. During the downturn, many companies faced the challenge of cost-cutting and so did Infosys. One of the easiest ways to keep profits was layoffs and salary freeze.

As the recession subsided and the recovery started, Infosys was among the first companies to pick the market trends and began recruitment. What is lesser known is how Infosys maintained such impressive numbers in the results. Starting last year, i.e. October 2009, Infosys announced salary hikes and also iRace.  While the former was welcome news to the hard working Infosys employees, iRace was not happily accepted, resulting in unprecedented attrition at Infosys. The Infosys HR Department had launched iRace (Infosys Role and Career Enhancement) as a cutting edge initiative to manage its employees, but it hasn’t worked out too well.  When the Wall Street Journal recently published an article on Infosys, current and ex employees logged in to leave more than 1100 comments – many bitterly criticizing the HR Department.

According to insiders, over this period of 5-6 months, from October 09 to April 10, around 5000 employees had submitted their resignations. A small percentage of these employees were retained by promising higher salaries and promotions. The remaining employees that did not succumb to more money, promotions and perks were given extended dates of resignation. These dates were extended by 3-4 months. With the help of this, the company managed to control its quarterly attrition rate and also saved on the employee costs. These employees who were leaving in a few months were not given any hikes.

Unlike America and Europe where most techies can leave with a months notice, some Technology Managers in India ‘persuade’ their juniors to extend their resignation period by a few more months.  Employees, wanting a good job reference, play along.  Logically, most employees that want to leave any company would prefer that it happened sooner rather than later.

The recent announcement of second pay hike effective from April 2010 will come into play only by the month of June, 2010. And the employees who resigned after April, but would be working for an extended period till June-July, would not receive the hikes.

(Techogss had published the following article on May 11, 2010)

Commentators trash Infy
By Sandhya

By any parameters of a successful technology business, Infosys is one of our leaders.  Its co-founder Mr. Murthy is widely accepted as a wise, ego free, transformative figure.  Like all technology companies, not every employee is happy.  And they let management know through leaking information to reporters as well as leaving caustic comments at the end of news articles.

Please read previous Techgoss reports on how Infosys had suffered bad media in the recent past. Rightly or wrongly, Infosys HR bosses Mohandas Pai and Nandita Gurjar have becoming the lightning rod for some employee’s anger.

Now this bad press has percolated to international media.

Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is the world's leading business publication. Boasting more than two million subscribers, the Journal is the largest newspaper by total paid circulation and has the largest individually paid circulation of the top 25 U.S. newspapers. The Wall Street Journal franchise has a global audience of 3.8 million.  A WSJ article titled ‘Can Infosys keep workers with hefty raises’ has resulted in more than 960 comments most of which are critical of some key players at the tech major.

Some of the commentators have even linked to evidence which shows that the Infosys job contract for its workers in California may be breaking some local laws. Some commentators have launched vicious personal attacks on key HR figures.

The highly skilled Infosys PR team had the media eating out of their hands till early 2009.  How things have changed in the last year and half! Infosys is no longer treated as a sacred cow by media houses.