Party Time at Infosys

Say cheers to this! IT behemoth Infosys has reintroduced binge benefit to its 100,000 employees, entitling them to a fixed quarterly allowance to take time out for recreation.

The company had withdrawn this perk six months ago in the wake of the economic meltdown and stagnation of its business.

There is now buzz in the campus that Infy may soon reintroduce other incentives such as interest-free home loans to needy employees, car loans and other giveaways.

The news comes close on the heels of the IT bellwether revising its full-year revenue guidance upwards and is aimed at boosting staff morale.

Nandita Gurjar, senior VP and group head of HR at Infosys, confirmed the news.

“Yes, we have reintroduced this particular scheme. This was put on hold due to economic downturn. Under this scheme, the company pays Rs 300 per person every quarter as party incentive. All employees will get this benefit,” Gurjar said.

Infoscians say the sop marks a return to good times both for the company and for the employees located at around 50 offices across the globe.

The party incentive comes as the icing on top of an across-the-board salary hike and promotions announced earlier this month. Offshore salaries have risen by 8 per cent while onsite remunerations have gone up 2 per cent.

For quarter ending September 30, Infosys reported a rise in net profit by 7.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis at Rs 1,540 crore and 3 per cent revenues growth at Rs 5,418 crore, beating street expectations.

Infosys Overhired

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India's second-ranked software exporter, said the business environment is challenging and clients are cautious in spending, although pressure for price cuts has eased.

The company, which employs more than 100,000 people, is not seeing any reason to accelerate hiring at this point of time due to the uncertain business environment, Chief Operating Officer Shibulal said.

" We are very honestly over-hired ," he said. "There is a very slight blip of activity, but there is nothing to tell me it (a recovery) is secular in nature."

Hopes of a pick-up in demand for outsourcing, which had been hit by the global downturn, increased after major Indian IT firms including Infosys beat street estimates in their April-June earnings and announced some large deals in the recent months.

But Infosys officials said that decision making by clients continued to be slow. "The situation is still quite challenging," S D Shibulal said. "If you look at our customers, they are not really seeing any increase on their revenue side. And because they are not seeing any increase on their revenue side, they will continue to be concerned."

The head of Nasscom, India's leading IT industry lobby, said signs of recovery in the United States were yet to translate into real business growth for outsourcing firms, though a pick-up was expected in the second half of the year.

Infosys Chief Executive S Gopalakrishnan said he expected technology spending by the company's clients to be flat in 2010 from the previous year. Ahead of the news, shares in the company valued at about $27 billion, closed up 0.9 per cent, underperforming a 1.5 per cent rise in the benchmark index. The company's shares have doubled so far in 2009, outperforming a 70 per cent rise in the broader market.

Large deals yet to come
Infosys has forecast its first annual revenue fall for the year to March 2010 on demand for fee cuts by its overseas clients. Most negotiations with clients on price cuts was over and the company was not seeing a second round of such talks, Shibulal said, but large deal flows were yet to resume.

"Overall, deals above $500 million which used to be there before the downturn, they have not reappeared in significant manner," he said. Infosys and local rivals Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro last month won IT services contracts from oil and gas major BP Plc.

Shibulal said Infosys' share of the contract was worth $116 million over five years.

infosys hikes pay

New Delhi: Infosys Technologies sprung a surprise for its employees by announcing that they may expect an increment in their salaries. The nations second largest software firm , Infosys also told its employees to expect limited promotions by October 1,2009.

Infosys initiated the salary increment strategy against all the other major firms in the IT sector like TCS, WIPRO, HCL Technologies who have stuck to the strategy of salary freezes in order to bring down the costs.

The company sent out an email statement on 18 September, 2009 to its workforce informing them about the firms decision of increasing salaries and offering need - based promotions . Infosys had so far abstained from extending any sort of salary increase to its employees . It had also skipped its promotion cycle in April as the employee utilisation rate was low. But with stabilising markets and better utilisation rates since then the firm planned to reward its employees.

The better utilisation rates were the result of the increased demand thereby also pushing up the operating margins of the company ahead of the target set of 30 percent.

On one hand Infosys has initiated the performance appraisal process for its 1,00,000 employees,on the other hand companies like Wipro , HCL are very strict on their actions of pay hikes. They have restricted the salary increments only to the best performers of the firm.

Layoffs History in India by Indian IT Companies

Layoffs History in India by Indian IT Companies. TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic layoff employees from India offices.

Please find compiled list of all layoffs across Indian IT companies. This list include layoffs from TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic.

India’s biggest software exporter, TCS, has asked several employees at its UK office to leave, as the company prepares to trim its payroll costs and cope effectively with the recession.
India’s second largest software services firm Infosys Technologies has downsized 5 per cent workforce at Infosys Australia.
The subsidiary employs 360 people, a majority of them from Expert Information Services — the first acquisition Infosys Australia made six years ago.

IT services company HCL Technologies has asked 450 employees at its Delhi and Bangalore offices to leave. A majority of those asked to leave are on the bench.

According to a HCL Technologies executive, the company had sacked 400 people in Delhi and another 50 in Bangalore in the last one-two months. The firm had earlier asked those on the bench to get assigned to projects or face the prospect of being asked to leave the firm.
T

ainted Satyam Computer has decided to lay off employees from its sales division in order to meet operating expenses and clear its debts. Nearly 10 per cent of its claimed workforce of 53,000 is engaged in providing support functions

Last year, Patni Computer Systems too laid off over 400 employees citing non-performance issues.

Around 59 employees of IT service provider Mastek are said to have opted to leave the company, three days after they were shifted to `virtual bench’ because of slowdown.
Last month, Mastek announced that it is putting 425 employees on virtual bench for the next 12 months following a slowdown in demand. The company had given two days to the 425 employees on virtual bench, the option of leaving the organisation.

More than 200 people Motorola India had hired just a few months ago to drive its mobile handsets business were reportedly laid off late last year. The company is also reported to have issued pink slips to at least 100 of its 4,000 employees in India in December. I
The US mobile phone maker also confirmed that the India operations will also face job cuts as part of its plan to shed more than 3,000 global workforce.

IT consulting and software company Capgemini has reportedly laid-off around 2,000 employees over several months in Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata centres.
IT giant Sun Microsystems reportedly laid off over 150 employees in India in January. According to a news report, most of the laid off employees were software developers working at the company’s Bangalore office.

The news report adds that the company may go for another round of lay offs soon. This round is likely to impact support staff from departments like marketing, human resources and sales.
Global search engine and web services provider Yahoo in December last year laid off 45 people from its India operations as part of its worldwide firing policy due to global meltdown.
The pink slips were in line with the company’s guidance given in October for the fourth quarter of 2008, which hinted at terminating the services of about 1,500 employees worldwide during the current quarter.

Pune-based Hexaware Technologies too is reportedly trimming its headcount across India. At one of the meeting HR Head reportedly said that the company would be axing jobs and slashing salaries.

Pune-based Persistent Systems has begun evaluating employees in a manner that would enable it to justify any possible manpower restructuring, including a layoff. Persistent employs over 4,000 across nine development centres in India and abroad. According to human resource experts, such a decision possibly points to a layoff in light of the downturn, which has resulted into a downward revision of IT budgets.

GlobalLogic, one of the largest outsourced product development companies in India, has laid off about 125 employees. While 108 employees were asked to leave ‘due to poor grading in the appraisals’ concluded in October, another 17 were told to leave because their ‘skill sets fell obsolete’.

The over $100-million company, which has delivery centres in Noida, Nagpur and Pune, confirmed the layoffs but said the figure is 115. Over the last two years, Global-Logic reduced its headcount to 2,000 from 3,000.
Courtesy Indiatimes.com