Infosys tells 50 of top employees: work with non-profit for a year, will pay you half your salary

Source: IndianExpress

In times of slowdown, Infosys Technologies Ltd, the country’s second largest software services company, has offered its top employees an option to work with a non-profit organization for a year but continue to earn half their income.

Asked if he was still hiring, Nandan Nilekani, Co-Chairman, Infosys, told Forbes that the company had launched a program where an employee can go and work with a non-profit organisation for a year “...and we’ll pay him half the salary for the duration.”Mohandas Pai, a board member and Director, Human Resources and Education and Research and Administration, told TheIndian Express that the option was available to 50 of its seniormost employees. “They come immediately after the top deck,” he said. Pai said the company has restricted the kind of non-profit organisations employees can work with.

“It has to be in the areas of public health and education or in regulatory bodies and industry associations,” he said, adding that these organisations must be secular and not have any religious affiliation.

This is the first year of the programme and seven Infosys employees have opted for it.Infosys has over 1 lakh employees in 50 offices spread across the world. “It is good quality people and not money that such (non-profit) organisations desperately need,” Pai said.

Adding that Infosys may look at expanding the scope of the programme depending on the experience and response from employees.