1. HR Issues
Infosys

2. Overview of Infosys
• Infosys was founded in 1981 by N. R. Narayana
Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N. S. Raghavan, S.
Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok
Arora.
• Infosys India’s 2nd largest IT company by market
share.
• Head quarters based in Bengaluru.
• Infosys currently headed by N.D.Shibulal
• It has offices in 29 countries and development centers
in India, US, China, Australia, UK, Canada, Japan
and many other countries.

3. • Infosys provides business consulting, technology,
engineering and outsourcing services to help clients
in over 30 countries.
• Infosys provides industry's best training programs.
• It has Leadership Development Center at Mysore.
• Considered as one of the Most Employee Friendly.
• The firm had won several “Employer of Choice “
Awards.

4. iRace
• Infosys Role and Career Enhancement (iRace),
launched in June 2009.
• This HR initiative, designed by consulting firm
Mercer.
• Extremely large and Complex exercise in which 25
career streams were created. Around 65 managers had
worked on it for 18 months.

6. Implementation of iRace
• Phase 1 - Mapping of Employee’s Strength.
• Phase 2 - Promotion and Hiring on Result
Mapping.
• Phase 3 - Definition of Different Role Paths.
• Phase 4 – Deal with implementation of
Performance Management.

7. Objectives of iRace
• To map positions with the experience and skill levels
of the employees.
• Role-based career structure that fitted in with its
business requirements and the needs of its employees.
• To align the career structure with the organization's
business imperatives, organizational philosophy, and
the aspirations of its employees

8. iRace
• iRace created tougher performance benchmarks
• Less-frequent promotions, resulting in fewer salary
increases.
• New certification exams linked to promotions and
salary increases. An employee is expected to clear
two such exams in a year.

9. • The working hours from 8 hours to 9 hours.
• Froze the hikes and promotion for two years.
• E.g. A project manager with 3.5 years of
experience has been renamed as technical lead
and he or she has to work for two more years
to become a project manager.

10. Effects of iRace
• Adverse Effect - Employees began expressing their
frustration at public forums and social networking
sites.
• Around 4,000 employees had resigned from Infosys
in February 2010. (Accounting for 3% of its total
strength).
• The discontent was expressed in terms of a rising
attrition rate and badmouthing the company
management on social media sites and forums.

11. Effects of iRace
• Many employees have been demoted as they don’t fit
the expected criteria and their salary has gone down
as well.
• Too much HR intervention
• Infosys iRace makes employees say ‘I Quit’.
• iRace actually led to 4,500 demotions in October
2009. Of the 4,500 employees demoted after the
introduction of iRace, nearly 2,500 have been given
promotion (effective April 2010) while the remaining
have reportedly been retained at the same level.

12. • Attrition rate among employees increased to
13.4 per cent in 2009-10 from 11.1 per cent in
the previous year.
• Working hours were increased with fixed
payment.

13. Issues Address By HR
• Mr. Vibin Balakrishnan, Infosys’s finance chief, said
the hikes may shrink company profits by 3%.
• Customers want a ten-year experienced technical
person, and we are providing them a three-year old.
• It is a very lean and mean structure.
• The platform defines roles, competencies and
proficiency requirements while linking career
movement to performance and business focus – By
Nandita Gurjar (SVP, HR).

14. Comments by Specialists
• Mr. Shashi Bhushan, an analyst at Mumbai-
based brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher, called it
an “aggressive” move.

15. Recommendations
• Its seen when the company is young and in
growing phase it pays its employees more. But
after they reach the saturation point they became
more conservative.
• It can also be said the launch of the policy was not
good.(Timing)
• When there is growth, there is more number of
promotions, it is not because you are being
promoted, but it is because the company needs
more jobs.

16. • Promotion must be based on performance.
• Differentiating factors or extra skills such as
decision making, negotiation skills should be
taken into consideration for promoting the
employees.
• Employees should be free in choosing their
career goals.
• Organization must train their employees to
learn new skills.

17. Thank You