Freezes hiring, pay hikes

Bengaluru: Like TCS, Infosys too has suspended salary hikes and promotions because of the business uncertainties following the Covid-19 pandemic. Infosys’s increments are normally effective April 1.

The company has also suspended fresh hiring, but it will honour all the commitments made to campus recruits and other hires. Infosys has made 36,000 offers to campus recruits for the 2020-21 fiscal. Company COO UB Pravin Rao also said they are not looking at Covid-related layoffs or furloughs (leave without pay) at this stage. But he said there would be performance-based exits.

The annualised (consolidated) attrition rose to 20.7% in the March quarter, from 19.6% previously. Employee strength fell by 1,083 to 2.4 lakh employees. “Because of the Covid situation we have lower utilisation. It’s not a secular trend, we have deferred some onboarding. I don’t think we should read too much into that,” Rao said.

Covid-19 impact

Infosys said a few employees across the world have tested positive for Covid-19. The company saidIt is in touch with them and their families to provide active and continuous support to help them through the rest and recovery. Infosys has also undertaken contact tracing measures to identify colleagues, if any, who interacted with them and ensure they are appropriately quarantined. Infosys has enabled 93% of its employees to work remotely. This meant shipping over 35,000 assets to employee residences. Rao said the company plans to bring employees back to office gradually. “In the first phase, we expect less than 5% to come back to work and this will probably go from 5%-10% to 15% in 3-4 weeks. We are looking at getting people back to work in a slow and calibrated manner keeping their safety in mind,” he said.