Infy lets employees ‘work from home’ for 9 days in a month

Infosys has made another set of changes to its HR policy, in an effort to remain attractive to its employees, arrest attrition and drive productivity.

The country’s second largest software exporter has allowed its employees five extra days in a month, to ‘work from home'. With this, employees can work 9 days in a month from their home, compared to 4 in the past. Infosys HR sent an internal email to all employees a few days ago.

Considering the kind of hassle that employees go through commuting to and fro, often travelling an average of 90 minutes one way, employees had asked the company HR to be more flexible when it comes to its work out of home policy. “This will also go a long way in enhancing employee productivity as well as maintain a better work-life balance,” the note added.

Infosys is taking these measures for a couple of reasons, opine industry watchers. The first has to do with the fact that the bulk of the 1.8 lakh employees, in their twenties are very vocal about flexibility, in the way they work. Secondly, efforts like these will go towards curtailing attrition, which according to Sikka has been steadily coming down since he took over. In October, Infosys appointed Krish Shankar, a former Philips executive as its global HR head with a mandate to handle a different kind of workforce.

Also, this development comes six months after Sikka first announced the decision to do away with the policy of casual wear only on Fridays. Instead, he advocated employees to flaunt their business casuals all week. Similarly, immediately after taking over, Sikka relaxed the company's long-held rule that said employees needed to wear ties, after a number of employees asked him to scrap this rule.

In the third quarter, attrition in Infosys came on an annual basis came down to 13.4 per cent from 14.1 per cent in the previous quarter. On a consolidated basis, attrition came down to 18.1 per cent from 19.9 per cent in the September-ended quarter.

The company reported a strong set of quarterly numbers and cheered the market by increasing FY16 revenue guidance to 12.8-13.2 per cent in constant currency terms, and 16.2-16.6 per cent in rupee terms on December 31, 2015 exchange rates.

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