How Infosys plans to check attrition

Infosys is using digital technologies in order to simplify recruitment, provide faster career track to employees, and incentivise people with top skills.
The company is looking at doubling the number of recruits from tier-I engineering colleges such as IITs and NITs to enrich its talent base.
These candidates who are offered twice the salary as compared to regular campus recruits, join as ‘power programmers’, a term that has been internally coined by the company to recognise the top coders.

With the attrition rate continuing well above 20 per cent, one of the highest in the segment, Infosys is on a drive to reimagine the way it engages with employees starting from the time of recruitment itself.

The Bengaluru-based company is using digital technologies in order to simplify recruitment, provide faster career track to employees, and incentivise people with top skills.

The firm, for example, has started a programme to fast-track career growth of freshers by identifying them early.

Under this programme, the company is picking top 5 per cent of performers after the end of the training period and these candidates are given preference over others while evaluating them for next promotion.

Digital Tag, another programme it has launched, looks at identifying people with digital readiness, and inventivise them for their skills and proficiency.

An employee can earn ‘Digital Tag’ based on his or her proficiency in any of the 32 digital skills and four niche skills the company has identified after going through training programmes, project works, and internal certification programmes.

Ever since it was introduced two quarters ago, Infosys is offering special quarterly skill-based bonus to these employees whose number stand around 2,000, according to Krish Shankar, executive vice-president and group head of human resources, Infosys.

“Over the past 2-3 years, we have reimagined many of our internal processes,” said Shankar.

“We operate in a fast-paced and dynamic industry.

"There has been a rise in the number of automation and agile projects.

"New technologies are now coming in. Hence, the process of managing and training talent is also changing.”

The company is looking at doubling the number of recruits from tier-I engineering colleges such as IITs and NITs to enrich its talent base.

These candidates who are offered twice the salary as compared to regular campus recruits, join as ‘power programmers’, a term that has been internally coined by the company to recognise the top coders.

Last year, the number of recruits from the tier-I engineering colleges stood at 500.

The company expects this number will double every year.

Other than fresh recruits, the ‘power programmer’ initiative is also open to existing employee base who get selected through internal coding contests or hackathons.

“Once they become power programmers, their salary gets doubled.

"We are seeing the number of power programmers doubling every year,” Shankar said.

According to the company, many of these initiatives were taken based on an internal survey, wherein the majority of the employees said they valued ‘career development’ as the single most important factor to continue to stay motivated and work with the company.

Infosys is expecting its fresher hiring to go up this year.

“The (fresher hiring) numbers are growing over the last year,” said Shankar, however, he did not divulge the exact number of people the company is planning to hire this year.

Photograph: PTI Photo