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Infosys Technologies Limited, the countries second largest software service firm has offered an option to its senior most employees, who fall after the top desk, to work with a non profit organization for a year but continue to earn half their income. Though the company has restricted the kind of NGO for which the employees can work. The service has to be in the areas of public health and education or in regulatory bodies & industry associations. Also, the officials have pointed out that the organization must be secular without having any sort of religious ties.

Infosys being a large group has over 1 lakh employees in fifty offices across the world. The offer is available to fifty employees. This is the 1st year of the programme and 7 employees have already opted to work under the scheme. The company plans to expand the programme and carry it further if the employees provide a favourable response.

In the time of slump Infosys isn’t looking to adopt a new technique to cut off the expenses. All the top employees of the company have huge pay cheques. Even if the firm pays half salary it won’t affect the financial condition of the company in any manner. Rather, public health and education are one of the most crucial matters that are affecting the world, many of the developing nations being the severe victims. This would only help to make world a bit better and improve the current status.

After all charity begins at home!

Lower demand takes its toll on Infosys's hiring plans

India’s second-biggest software exporter, Infosys Technologies, has postponed its hiring plans for engineering graduates this year by almost six months, as the company seeks to cope with a lower demand for software services in its top markets of US and Europe.

Next fiscal, Infosys will be interviewing potential employees by visiting top engineering colleges during eighth semester, and not sixth semester as before.

“Earlier, we used to give offers an year in advance, even one-and-half years in advance. We have changed that,” says Infosys board member and director, HR, TV Mohandas Pai, told Infosys have a target of hiring 25,000 employees this fiscal and based on this; it will be hiring another 9,000 employees till March, 2009. For the December quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries added 5,597 employees on a gross basis, much lower than the previous quarter’s 10,117. Net employee addition stood at 2,772 for the quarter.

One of the reasons for scrapping advance hiring is that the company is moving towards a leaner bench. According to Mr Pai, Infosys’ current bench strength is at 20% of total employees, which is likely to come down to 10% and eventually stabilise between 10 and 15% in the coming fiscal. “Attrition is down because growth has come down and hence the need for bench is less. We are in the middle of an adjustment towards a leaner bench,” he pointed out.

The IT major has also tightened performance management norms and has placed around 5% of its global workforce (roughly 5,000 out of total staff strength of 100,000-plus) under the scanner. Senior managers have been asked to give the lowest performance rating to the ‘underperforming’ 5% as a part of the company’s consolidated relative ranking. Though rock-bottom rankings have been handed out earlier, this is the first time that Infosys has made it mandatory.

Pai said Infosys has been trying to make the organisational structure leaner and efficient resulting in some 100 positions being knocked off. “They are not being redeployed because these positions do not exist any longer. But it is a modest figure when compared to the overall numbers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the company has reduced the variable part of the board members’ compensation by 30% in the second quarter of the current fiscal and by an additional 20% in the third quarter.