Infosys has shed 1.5-2 per cent of its total workforce in each of the last two quarters, which it terms as involuntary attrition.

This works out to anywhere between 2,000 and 3,000 employees every quarter; basically, this is involuntary attrition and is based on the performance of each employee.

In a post-earnings analyst call soon after the second quarterly results were announced, Infosys CEO, Salil Parekh said attrition had declined to 19.4 per cent, which included voluntary attrition of below 18 per cent. During the previous quarter, one of the top executives had said that involuntary attrition was higher compared to voluntary attrition. As of September this year, Infosys had a total of 2,36,489 employees, of which 2,21,851 are software engineers. In an email response, an Infosys spokesperson said: “As a high performance organisation, involuntary attrition is integral to normal course of business and this should not be interpreted as any mass trimming across any level in particular.”

In an earlier interaction with BusinessLine , Infosys COO UB Pravin Rao said there has been no mass firing of employees. “We added about 18,000 trainees from campuses in India last year. This year too, it will probably be the same,” Rao added. But at the same time, performance management is also very critical.

“So every year, during the performance cycle, we take a hard look at who is performing and who is not. Those who are performing well, we give opportunities to perform better.

“But sometimes when people don't deliver, then you have to let go. But that is the nature of a high-performance culture. I don’t think there is anything unusual from what we have done in the past,” Pravin Rao added.

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