BANGALORE, INDIA: Infosys Technologies is not only an example of how a small company grows and becomes a global success but also an example of how it changes with the growth while making sure employee expectations remain the same.

CIOL had recently carried a story about the employee sentiments about the HR policies in the company, which provoked heavy response from the readers, of which many were apparently Infoscions.

Based on these readers' response, Akanksha Prasad spoke to Nandita Gurjar, senior vice president and Global HRD head at Infosys, about her views on that and how the new policy changes in Infosys. Excerpts:

Infosys recently introduced iRace. How did you go about it and what was the idea behind this?

Nandita Gurjar: iRace - Infosys Role and Career Enhancement - was introduced in October 2009. It was an extremely large and complex exercise in which 24 career streams were created. Around 65 managers had worked on it for 18 months. The only way we could have done it was during the slowdown because we would not have so much time in a normal day, so our timing was perfect.

We need to create career streams where growth can be no longer defined by movement up. In this war for talent, Indian companies have been promising promotion in every two years. But employees continue to do the same job - they get a new designation, new salary, new compensation, this is tricking the person.

In actual terms, a change of job and a promotion means that I am doing something else, something which is more complex and at least 50 per cent different than what I was doing before.

This is compulsory for all employees. We did not provide such a choice. Because this is a technology company, you should work on technology. Earlier we used to allow a four-five year old to become a project manager, today we will not.

One has to understand that when there is growth, there is more number of promotions, it is not because you are being promoted, but it is because the company needs more jobs. In slowdown number of jobs that opened up were lesser, but people misunderstood it to be due to iRace.

How is this related to clients and pricing, and where do employees come there?

NG: Employees are important stakeholder in any initiative as ultimately they are the ones who would get impacted and will have to drive the initiative. So employee aspiration is taken and given due note in the whole career path making of iRace.

We saw that pricing will become an important factor in the coming five years. The point why we introduced it is because skill is becoming a commodity and pricing is continuously being questioned. The company is meant for the clients.

For the last few years clients have been complaining about lack of technically strong people. Indian companies have been continuing to get their people very quickly into people management. As a result, a person works on technology for just four to five year and then moves up to management.

Customers want a ten-year experienced technical person, and we are providing them a three-year old, which they can get in the US. So through iRace, we intend to give you high value at work, high technology at work for better pricing.

How do you see this new program getting accepted among the employees?

NG: The people we spoke to, who newly joined, loved the fact that they would work on technology for longer period. They just want to focus on technology, their core job, than managing the employees.

After mapping people according to their aptitudes, 92 per cent of the people got mapped to what they are doing now and about eight per cent got lower responsibilities because of their incapability of handling the work. This eight per cent has grievances about demotion. There will always be a group of five-ten per cent who would be unhappy and more expecting than the usual culture, and we have to learn how to deal with them.

Moreover, iRace was introduced in October, so people are yet to understand it. In April, we will introduce more features that would help them in longer run.

A lot of employees at Infosys had expressed their fear of layoff, complained of management issues and that the company forced them to take different roles. What do you have to say about this?

NG: In terms of performance management and layoff, there was no layoff. There were changes in the roles; people were asked to take different role but it was again based on their performance, and non-performers were asked to go.

Earlier, we used to give the message to the bottom five per cent, that they have to go but they used to get jobs. Last year cracked them as they could not get another job, and this brought out their angst.

Do you believe that the bond among employees, during the era of Narayana Murthy and Nilekani is falling apart and the employees are missing those leaders and employee attention?

NG: People who have seen Infosys when it was small still have expectations. But they should understand that a few things change with time and growth. It is natural; you cannot stop growth and be a child all your life! Similarly, people referring to Murthy and Nilekani are talking about the days of 2000, when Infosys was a very small and different company, of about 10,000 employees. But now it has around 1,09882 employees on board.

Unlike a small company, CEO cannot be your immediate senior, but you have level of leaders, and at Infosys, Kris has his own blog, where employees can ask, talk and comment about anything.

The employees have leaders at every level. People would have liked to believe that Murthy and Nilekani continue to be there at management. But it is also reality that your leaders cannot be the same which were there years ago. Murthy and Nilekani are like icons for the employees, but we do have leaders after them. We have leadership and succession programs and are already grooming the leaders of coming years.

What do your employee health indicators say about the brand Infosys? Has that moved up and come down in course of time?

NG: The HRD constantly worked on mapping the employee health indicators and we see that Infosys continues to be the most sought-after company. In one of the surveys, we were rated as India's "best company to work for.”

At Infosys, our retention age is very high, so you would find a lot of old-timers. The average retention age at Infosys is five to six years, which is one of the highest in our industry, and they stay because they believe in Infosys.

Millions of resumes continue to float in every year for all levels. In campus, we had 93 per cent conversion of the offers. We had never had such huge number of acceptances. Till last year, it used to be around 70-80 per cent.

If about 60 per cent of the work force comes from campus, around 25-26 per cent of the employees comprise the people working with us for more than 10-12 years. This number has not changed over many years.

This is not only because of the name Infosys, but also because of the diverse career options, like in product line, innovation, research.

How do you check the attrition, where is the challenge?

NG: The challenge is in retaining the people of working age group of three to five years because they are the most marketable and booming. It is natural for them to get attracted to outside offers. The only way companies can attract them is through different career streams, value addition and compensation. And it not only goes to competition, but also that the same group that goes for higher education. Our first quarter attrition rate is therefore higher than throughout the year.

We also have right retention plan, for the employees. We ensure that the value of employees resume increases by 50-60 per cent year-on-year, by staying in the company. And in terms of compensation we provide industry best long-term bonus for senior levels. We have seen that the attrition rate of people working on specialized and rare skills, that are very much marketable in the industry, is very low than the industry average. It is as much as six per cent, similar is the number of our high performers attrition.

Till 2004, we were largely operating in application maintenances business. Today this segment accounts for just 48 per cent of the overall business; the rest is all new lines of businesses, like consulting, enterprise solution, system integration, products. So people have more options - both on-site and off-site. So we have diverse options for people looking for career movements.