Infosys said on Thursday it will not hike wages anytime soon though it will hire 35,000 employees as planned earlier.

“If you look at 2008-09, we had looked at the wage hike in the middle of the year, and we will revisit the wage hike as usual in the middle of the year,” Mr S.D. Shibulal, CEO and Managing Director, said.

However, the company has tried to keep the morale of employees high by offering promotions and progressions “as we talked last time, we have done 20,000 across the organisation, which is about 13 per cent of the employee strength,” Mr Shibulal said.

It is, however, on track on its target of hiring 35,000 people for the year, despite uncertain economic conditions. The company had said earlier that it was planning to hiring about 35,000 people this year of which 13,000 would be for the Infosys BPO.

“We have taken a conscious decision to honour our commitments, otherwise it will affect our brand in the universities,” the Infosys Chief Financial Officer, Mr V. Balakrishnan, told Business Line .

During the quarter, the company added 9,236 people (net addition 1,157 employees) to take the total employee count to 1,51,151. Utilisation, however, has come down from 71.1 per cent last year to 69.6 per cent this quarter, and Mr Balakrishnan attributes this to the new employee additions.

“In the short terms, utilisation would be low and could affect margins but if there is growth and stability in the environment, but in our industry we have to go one year ahead of time and hire people in campuses,” Mr Balakrishnan said.

“However, while you could end up with a higher degree of bench, in the long term we are better prepared for growth as we already have people and cost structure built in,” he added. .

> sushma.un@thehindu.co.in

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