The staff members, who got promotions and progression orders recently, will get the hike, but the status quo continues for the rest of 1,51,151 employees of Infosys
BANGALORE, INDIA: For now, 20,000 employees of Infosys Limited can afford a smile. They were promoted over the last month and will get the salary hikes they are entitled to, based on their new positions and grades.
"All the promotions and progressions, for about 20,000 employees, will naturally get the hikes they are due. We are yet to decide on the rest of the employees. At this point in time, we are not looking at offering a hike for them. We are, of course, thinking about it every day, every night, week and month," said chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan, at the announcement of the first quarter (2012) results of the IT major.
Chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys, S.D. Shibulal pointed out that they had done the promotions and progressions as they talked the previous time. "We have done 20,000 across the corporations. If you look at 2008-2009, we had looked at the wage hike in the middle of the year. We will revisit the wage hike as usual in the middle of the year," he explained.
On the contrary, responding to a query from CIOL on whether the other staff members would get a wage hike next quarter, Balakrishnan said that they (the management) were not in a position to specify the timeline as of now. However, those who got promoted and progressed to the next grade, the increment would be effective this July 1.
As compared to the company's current headcount of 1,51,151, the number hovers a little above 13 per cent.
Earlier, Infosys posted a Q1 revenues growth in USD is just 4.8 per cent YoY, belying expectations. It also lowered its revenues outlook for the year to 5 per cent, from the below-industry average 8-10 per cent guidance it gave last quarter.
Also read: Infosys lowers guidance in dollar earnings
''We have given a guidance of, at least, 5 per cent for the year, which reflects cross-currency movement and pricing decline,'' said Shibulal. Incidentally, the country's second largest software services provider refrained from giving out quarterly projections for its revenue growth, but persisted with its tradition of issuing annual guidance.
While it was attributed to unstable global situation, with limited visibility on client spending, following the announcement, shares of Infosys took a beating at the BSE and plunged 10 per cent.
The IT major was, however, positive about meeting its target of hiring 35,000 people this fiscal. It includes 13,000 in its BPO operations and the rest in its IT business.
"We are going to add 35,000 more people this year, the same number as we guided last quarter for the full year," Balakrishnan said, as Shibulal, too, expressed confidence in achieving the figure.
To that, the CFO added that they didn't have to hire anybody "as we have a large bench. But we want to honour our commitment to hire fresh talents from campuses".
According to Shibulal, Infosys is operating at 78-81 per cent utilization.
