Attrition has been a big concern for the IT behemoth. Total manpower is down by about 1,823 in 2013. But Srikantan Moorthy, Senior VP & Group Head-Human Resource, Infosys is unperturbed by the situation. He says: "On the issue of attrition while on the last twelve months, or LTM, basis the attrition numbers are higher, on an absolute basis the numbers have come down over the last three quarters."
He says the company has already made more than 16,000 offers, out of the 23,000 offers it plans to make this year
Meanwhile, Ravi Kumar, Senior VP & Head-Insurance Practice, Infosys, is very optimistic about growth of the insurance vertical.
Also Read: Larger aspirations led to top exits: Infosys CEO Shibulal
Below is the verbatim transcript of Ravi Kumar & Srikantan Moorthy's interview on CNBC-TV18
Q: Do you expect the insurance vertical to grow more aggressively than it has in the previous quarter?
Kumar: Yes, absolutely. We are very optimistic. We are looking at the budgets of our clients and looking at some of the areas I just mentioned and positioning ourselves rightfully to capture the wallet share in these areas. So we are very confident that we will capitalise on some of these areas where there is spend.
Q: The big concern on attrition continues to be relatively high in comparison to your peers at 18 percent. What is the strategy now to actually try and bring down attrition rate? I understand the total manpower is down by about 1,823 people. What is the situation in terms of hiring and how much more can you actually squeeze utilisation rates which are currently at 74 percent?
Moorthy: On the issue of attrition while on the last twelve months, or LTM, basis the attrition numbers are higher, on an absolute basis the numbers have come down over the last three quarters. So that is a good trend and we are seeing that continuing from an absolute perspective. However, there are several things that we are doing in terms of people. If you look at attrition as a function of utilisation, compensation, developmental activities or everybody engaged with them we have done many things. For example, we have changed the compensation structure last June. On the developmental front we have brought in several initiatives including the concept of a Bridge Academy to re-skill people, on the engagement part we have used technology extensively to connect with our people globally.
On the aspect of what is happening on hiring we have already made more than 16,000 offers for the 23,000 offers that we want to make this year. We are also looking to bring in about maximum 6,000 off-campus offers starting late January early February, so there is a lot of activity going on that is bringing people in, engaging them and developing them.
Q: There has been a lot of speculation on whether there is going to be some sort of an additional wage hike perhaps, especially as far as senior management level positions are concerned or some sort of program that will be rolled out to curb senior management attrition. Is there any thought at this point in time on that?
Moorthy: Nothing at all. There is nothing that has been discussed. Compensation is something that we talked about in the April quarter and that continues to be the plan at this point in time.
Q: I also want to ask you about utilisation rates. QoQ they have fallen actually marginally, but what can we really expect in terms of being able to squeeze utilisation further?
Moorthy: Up to about 80 percent is something that we have used in the past and I expect that is where it will go. Any slack in utilisation helps us in re-skilling people for new technologies that we need to be using for our clients. So we are healthy right now in terms of utilisation though there is some room if we need to expand in short notice.
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