Although Infosys kicked off the first quarter of FY2015 with numbers that lived up to street expectations, the company witnessed its worst period of attrition in the first quarter with 10,627 employees (19.5 per cent) exiting, since the controversial iRACE (Infosys Role and Career Enhancement) programme was introduced in June 2009.

Initiated when TV Mohandas Pai was Director HR at Infosys, iRACE clamped down hard on non-performers by demoting them, leading to an exodus of employees from the company.

In an interview with Business Line , Senior vice-president and head of human resource development at Infosys, Srikantan (Tan) Moorthy said Infosys has not fully recovered from the attrition that was sparked off by iRACE. Excerpts:

When was the last employee satisfaction survey conducted and it involved how many of them. What has been the outcome of the survey?

The survey was conducted in August 2013 where 70 per cent of our employees participated. Responses to the survey reaffirmed our belief in our strengths which are our differentiators – our strong focus on client value, offering an equal opportunity and safe workplace and the best-in-class infrastructure and facilities in our development centres. However, I must tell you that we have not fully recovered from iRACE, an HR initiative and hence are putting in several programmes to boost the confidence of our employees.

In first quarter, 7,500 promotions were given. At what levels were these given and when will the next set of promotions be made?

We have introduced quarterly promotion cycles. Therefore, promotions will be given in all of the remaining three quarters. The promotions given in the quarter are across job levels in delivery, sales and business enabling functions.

By what percentage has the variable component in salary been brought down at various levels to keep employees happy?

The reduction of variable salary has been in the range of 10-20 per cent across different levels.

Of the 22,000 campus offers made, how many have been on-boarded and when will the rest be on-boarded?

As on date, we have on-boarded over 6,000 individuals. The remaining will be on-boarded as per business requirements before end of the financial year.

What is the progress on your employee re-skilling Bridge Academy programme initiated last year?

The Bridge Academy was launched with an objective to re-skill and develop competencies and knowledge that would allow for creating a talent pool from within. The programme spread across 4.5 months provides a mix of best practices from higher education programmes and role-based skilling. The idea is to get our software engineers to develop skills in specific areas – acquire business acumen, develop consultative and software architecture skills. During the programme, our engineers work on projects where they shadow a senior, get mentored and assessed and are also given feedback on the job. Approximately 400+ employees have gone through the programme and most of them have been promoted.

Infosys has recently put 50 senior managers through a 3-day training programme. What has been the impact?

The impact of the programme has been a greater aligned, more engaged and committed senior delivery workforce (with over 14 years of experience) who manage large teams of over 200 employees each. The managers benefited from getting an enterprise view better enabling them to engage with their teams, which will help contain attrition at the mid-management levels.

How are you creating a fast track career path for high performers?

The ACE Fast Track programme ensures high career velocity for high performers who are technically proficient and fast learners.

It provides them with opportunities and focused developmental interventions to grow faster, and embark on a career path leading to the highest echelons in the organisation.

The Expert Track will encourage employees with strong technical capabilities to contribute in an individual capacity. This is done to promote individual interests as well as organisational needs for talent.

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