INFOSYS BACK TO ‘COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM’ REGIME

Infosys on Friday announced a $10-million (~652-million) bonus payout for its employees. The company also said it had given a 100 per cent variable payout to the employees, highest in the past 10 quarters.

This comes as the company has renewed focus on reskilling employees, which has been spelt out as the third of its four-pillar strategy unveiled on Friday. Scaling up the agile digital business, energising core businesses and localisation in foreign markets were touted to be the other three pillars.

“I want all our employees to look at a reskilling agenda, both for what they want to do in the future and also for what our clients are looking for from us and from our employees,” Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh said.

Infosys said it would offer a salary hike for 85 per cent of its employees from April. For the other 15 per cent, including middle and senior management-level staff, compensation revision would be effective July 1.

“For a majority of the people in India, the wage hike will be in the range of mid-single digits,” U B Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, said. “Continuing with past trend on wage hikes, we will differentiate people based on their performance and contribution.”

The company is already on a localisation spree in the US, its largest market. The company added 2,500 US employees to its workforce in the past year and plans to hire over 10,000 more Americans over the next two years. In the January-March 2018 period, Infosys added 2,416 employees on the next basis (after discounting attrition), taking the total headcount to 204,107.

Infosys’ attrition rate increased from 15.8 per cent in the October-December quarter to 16.6 per cent in the January-March quarter. It is not something to worry about, the company said, as exit rates of high performers fell to a great extent. “This rise is normal in the bands that we typically see. It is seasonal for Q4 because there are people going for higher studies,” Rao said.