Infosys focusing on training leaders for the future, says EVP Srikantan Moorthy

Reskilling employees is extremely important to ensure a company remains competitive in the market and maintains a dynamic environment. In an interview with Moneycontrol, Srikantan Moorthy, Executive Vice President, Infosys, talks about a range of issues including investing in reskilling employees, the need for senior management to upskill and the changing nature of training in IT services.

He also spoke about the role of the Infosys Leadership Institute which imparts training, holds seminars and workshops for team development.

Edited excerpts:

Q: One hears a lot about reskilling being a focus in the Indian IT industry. At what levels is Infosys looking to re-train its employees?

A: To stay competitive and relevant in a highly dynamic environment, it is imperative for organisations to invest in reskilling employees. Infosys believes in lifelong learning for all its employees, and competency development continues to be a key area of strategic focus. Our Education, Training and Assessment (ETA) department is at the forefront of creating a culture of learning in the organisation.

Q: Apart from freshers and middle management, how are the senior executives upgrading their skills?

A: In today’s fast paced technology changes, reskilling is quintessential for survival. We have created programmes across multiple dimensions.

The culture of learning at Infosys has greatly helped in reskilling of our senior executives. Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI) is a customized
approach to host initiatives aligned to specific development needs of the senior leadership team.

Our business leaders, along with HR business partners, identify needs for their respective talent pool through formal talent review discussions.

These themes help us to evolve our learning calendar of open programmes called Leadership Labs. We had over 200 leaders nominated across
functions, subsidiaries and technologies, resulting in a diverse mix across locations, focused on leadership facets like executive presence, storytelling etc.

To provide deep dive into specific skills, we launched four Leadership Tracks for 45 leaders, spanning a period of 3-6 months. In partnership with Stanford Graduate School of Business, we had two cohorts comprising 38 and 65 leaders who completed their graduation during the year.

Q: How has the role of the Infosys Leadership Institute changed over the years?

A: The Institute is committed to helping leaders assume greater roles and positively influence their teams, clients and the community at large.

Infosys Leadership Blueprint is our common point of reference, and knits the four key dimensions are- Inspire Transformation, Unlock Synergies, Amplify Team Potential and Unleash Impact for Clients and Infosys to help our leaders be ready for the future.

Q: What part of the workforce is now millennials? Given some of the consumer facing verticals that Infosys services, are customers asking for more young people to help develop software solutions?

A: Over the last year, we have increased our campus recruitment efforts globally which provides us a great opportunity to bring on board young talent.

The investment we make in educating the campus hires helps us get them ready for enterprise work. We are seeing a large acceptance by
clients of this talent hired and trained by us.

Teams that work with our clients on their digital transformation journey have digital strategists, designers, analysts and technologists with varied
levels of experience.

Q: With automation taking over the more mundane/repetitive work, what kind of re-orientation is being done at Infosys' freshers training programme?

A: The foundation programme at Infosys for the campus recruits is aimed at preparing young talent for enterprise work.

While some of the elements related to building a strong foundation in software engineering continues, we are also continuously revising the curriculum to ensure relevance to the work we do for clients.

For example, design thinking to develop problem identification skills, new programs related to machine learning and full-stack development are all part of the current curriculum.

Q: Tell us something about design thinking going forward?

A: Enhancing the creative confidence of our people is a key element of our education process at Infosys and design thinking is now part of the foundation programme curriculum.

Design thinking is used widely in our client engagements to jointly identify business problems with our clients. We also use the design thinking methodology for internal programmes to get all stakeholders on to the same page.