Present situation is not a problem statement but opportunity to make changes: Infosys HR head

Richard Lobo, executive vice-president and head, HR, Infosys

As IT companies face rising employee turnover, the company doesn’t view it as a problem but more as an opportunity to listen to people and make changes, says Richard Lobo, executive vice-president and head, HR, Infosys.

Since the talent models themselves are changing, Thirumala Arohi Mamunooru, senior vice-president and head, education, training and assessments, said that the HR team has prepared a mechanism where over 3 lakh employees can have three different kinds of the workforce.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol the two HR managers said that as part of its long-term strategy to manage talent, Infosys is not just hiring but also focusing on creating talent through its various learning models. Edited excerpts:

Despite addressing policies around flexibility, autonomy and rewarding careers, IT companies are still witnessing the aftereffects of the “great resignation”. How do you see it?

Lobo: Whether we want to call it the great resignation or not, I think it resulted in a lot of churn in the system. But to me, you have to go back to fundamentals. You have to focus on what is core, what makes you successful—offering employees opportunities for career growth, purpose at work and a good overall experience.

I don’t look at the present situation as a problem statement but more as an opportunity to listen to people and make changes.  

Why has there been continuous bad news on the attrition front?

Lobo: I think there is a desire to experiment with the new—that is the primary driver. The second one is not to put that on the back burner, I think there is a great opportunity to make money. When there is a shortage in the market, there are opportunities for you to get more than what you’re getting. The third one is flexibility. Employees don’t need to relocate for jobs.

Infosys understands and reacts to some of these situations. Apart from increased flexibility, we have done two consecutive salary revisions and have paid out higher variables. Also, we did close to 30,000 promotions last year.

In light of recent disruption, how did you envision the three- to five-year roadmap for HR, driving strategy and implementing operational priorities? What would be the major pillars of this planning?

Lobo: To be very frank, five years is a long way these days. I’ll call it long-term just to make it simpler.

Firstly, we have to invest in managers. One of the reasons people leave companies or don’t want to stay for longer is that they want to work in a team where there are good managers. And we have invested in building our managers, both in terms of their technical capacity as well as how they manage.

The second focus is on delivering a better employee experience at all stages of employees’ journey at the workplace. Thirdly, we are focusing on improving careers. One of the examples includes people who go through some programme could move from doing IT services work to consulting work, which normally pays better. And lastly, we have to focus on what is beyond work—health benefits and care for families.

How exactly is Infosys driving changes?

Mamunooru: Infosys has created a model of great resilience. We have started to look at how to rotate people so that the risk factor goes down and, at the same time, employees get the benefit of learning new things and applying them to new projects.

Secondly, Infosys is transforming into a ‘live enterprise’ powered by various digital offerings that are designed to provide its employees with digital experiences ranging from process simplification to continuous learning. 

Since the talent models themselves are changing, the HR team has prepared a mechanism where we can have three different kinds of workforces—our employees, subcontractors depending on the need, and gig workers.

Besides, the HR team has created an architecture framework under which employees have the flexibility to create roles depending on the needs of the project rather than having only one standard template. It means though the…designation may be the same, there are different things that they do.

We also have a ‘digital pentagon’ model. Instead of trying to just tell someone to learn AI, ML or DevOps, the pentagon—which has five important themes—makes employees aware of requirements and they know which technologies to invest in.

We are seeing high instances of “offer shopping”. How is Infosys prepared to tackle this? 

Lobo: ‘Offer shopping’ is more to do with a short-term phenomenon where people are what we call reacting to what is happening in our free talent market. And of course, it has two sides. From a candidate’s perspective, this is probably a great opportunity to maximise earnings.

On the other hand, we have to look at what message this sends to the larger client base. The Indian IT industry has built a brand name over the years that we can deliver client requirements at a reasonable cost and very professionally. Now, if you start creating all these kinds of practices which are not extremely professional, then you give a bad name to the whole industry.

As a company, Infosys doesn’t subscribe to this. But I would also bring in the point that the vast majority are doing the right thing. And I don’t think we should get too swayed by what a small group is doing.

Amid the pandemic-led disruptions, do you think hiring talent is still expensive? How do you see this in future?

Lobo: Over the last year, the cost equation has increased and that is evident if you look at the results of any of the companies. We have to take into account high inflation which is running in most economies. Most developed as well as the other economies are seeing close to an 8- 9 percent inflation number.

In light of this, we have done both—paid more to hire as well as to retain talent. And we balance the equation by investing, as mentioned earlier.

Have the recent layoffs in startups impacted Infosys’ talent strategy?

Lobo: To be frank, I don’t know what the exact numbers are. In a broader sense, what we are seeing is stabilisation in demand. I don’t think there’s been a decrease, but there is definitely not a spike, there is not what we call a huge increase.

Now, whether this is because of people moving out of the startup ecosystem or moving out of other companies is difficult to say because there are no clear numbers or data on this.