Infosys Limited plans to promote 16,000 employees, have a net addition of only 6,000 and no wage hike this April, all of which point to a not-so-great quarter for the company that could lead to employee dissatisfaction
BANGALORE, INDIA: Effective this month, the country's second largest software company, Infosys Limited, will promote 16,000 employees in the current financial year. Last year, 18,000 of its staff were in for promotions.
Incidentally, they would be the only ones to get a pay hike as a default benefit of progression to the next grade/level.
This year, the software major has planned to have a net addition of 6,000 more employees, of which 1,200 would be locals from its onsite locations including the United States and Europe. "Many would be laterals and we would create new jobs as well in those markets," said co-founder and chief executive officer S.D. Shibulal, at the announcement of the quarterly results of the company here on Friday.
"We are going to add 35,000 more people next year, which includes 13,000 people for the BPO operations," Infosys chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan said.
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Infosys has witnessed a QoQ decline of 2.4 per cent in its net profits and the dip in revenues is double that figure over the previous quarter, in what has been an understandably tough three months for the company, as the CEO chose to put it across.
This is surmised to be the major reason behind the company's plans to have a net addition of only 6,000 this year, as compared to 19,174 last year. It goes without saying that pay hike being ruled out for now could well be attributed to the slump in net profit.
About this, Nandita Gurjar, senior vice-president and group head of Human Resources at Infosys Limited, said, "We have informed our employees this (Friday) morning and we might revisit the decision in the coming quarter. Our employees will understand it; they will be fine (with the decision)."
Many of them, added Gurjar, would have anticipated this move, just going by their group's performance over the said period. "Only those who didn't know about it and expected a hike, would be disappointed," she maintained.
When we did a reality check on whether Infoscions had been informed about them not being assured a hike, some seemed unaware of the development and admitted not being happy with it.
"It's time to focus on the business. If our clients are happy, we can better our revenues. In turn, our employees will be happy," said the HR head.
She also informed that the company's current attrition rate in the U.S. was in the range of 18-20 per cent. For the record, in FY12 as well, Infosys hired 1,200 local residents in their foreign locations.
As for the allegation leveled by their employee Jack Palmer that Infosys flouted visa norms in the U.S., Gurjar played it down, quipping, "A video doesn't make it a big issue."
