Infosys Philippines BPO: low salaries
By Juan Dela Cruz

I’m surprised with the negative feedback I get from Infosys Philippines employees. While the rest of Indian BPO’s in the Philippines generously offer huge salaries, Infosys has become a poster child of cheapness. When Indian giants like GENPACT and IBM-Daksh were first establishing themselves in Philippines, they offered record compensation.

Genpact and Daksh offered inflated salaries and huge bonuses as part of a strategy to attract the best possible talent. This began the upward trend of burgeoning salaries that have attracted more and more people to the BPO industry. GENPACT attracted agents from HSBC by topping their salaries of 18,000 pesos more than 2 years ago. IBM-Daksh has been equally generous to experienced employees offering above 20K starting salary plus 50,000 sign-on bonuses. WNS is reputed to be very selective in their agent hiring but also offers generous starting salaries. Infosys meanwhile seems to be stuck in 2003 by offering a measly 12,500 pesos starting salary. The peso is on parity with the Indian rupee.

This has been the feedback from current employees of Infosys BPO Philippines. They say apart from this laughable salary, the benefits and perks are way below Philippine call center standards as well. Their contract includes allowance of 1,500 which is way below almost 4,000 my friend’s wife used to get from HSBC 3 years ago. Infosys offers a night differential pegged at 15% for all employees which is only half of what a friend received in Etelecare back in 2003. Infosys does offer medical coverage benefit to a maximum of 50,000 pesos. However, this does not even come close to what my friend’s wife is getting from her lowly call center employer where she gets a maximum 150,000 pesos maximum coverage.

Moreover, feedback about other experiences from current employees of Infosys Philippines screams of hellish nightmare. Two months ago, employees were told there would be no salary increases for this year even if it is black and white in anybody’s employment contract especially for those hired March 2008 who were promised an increase for this year. For the lucky ones who were able to get salary increases in the past, they had to make do with a measly 500 pesos increment because Infosys does not have an attractive salary increase matrix. Their agents have to deal with sharing of office and phone equipment and risk health hazards. Restrictive policies also don’t allow their employees much freedom to enjoy their stay in Infosys. A few also complain about poor records keeping evident by the fact that their HR people could not locate their employees’ records on demand. A lot of them have regretted joining Infosys when they could have joined another company for same work but better pay and experience. Even with an admirable company profile, according to my sources these days the Infosys’ branch in the Philippines is more likely to lose the employees have than attract new ones.

(Email me news and tips at 1delacruise dot gmail dot com)