INFOSYS: BUILDING A TALENT ENGINE TO SUSTAIN

GROWTH

Group No 1

Prepared by:
Anu Ranganikar (14F111)
Debalina Ray (14F119)
Kanika Bandooni (14F127)
Neha Dua (14F134)
Pallavi Gupta (14F138)

Ans 1: Infosys following the new normal concept OR Not

The phrase New Normal is meant to imply that something which was previously abnormal has
become commonplace.
The once ranked Best Employer in India, Infosys had slipped to rank fourth in 2006. While they
scored high on corporate activities like training, they scored much less on Employee Satisfaction
score with emphasis on poor work-life balance. Increasing rate of attrition can be attributed to
reasons like: i) Switching to company with higher pay-scale (30-40% increase by leveraging the
brand value of Infosys), ii) Pursuing Higher education or iii) Shift to Managerial / Leadership
roles (digressing the rigorous gating process of Infosys).
Infosys already had brand value and hence, developing employee self-advocacy wasnt a priority
for Infosys as part of New Normal through increasing pay structure. They used New Normal
to address attrition rate and retain key talent, such that competitors do not poach their employees
by paying them with higher salary rate. Bikramjit Maitra, Senior VP of HR proposed the idea of
a market of talent within the company, by which employees meeting certain gating
criteria would be eligible to place themselves on market for new positions available within the
company. The potential members would be interviewed by the respective project managers based
on their previous record of previous project, appraisal ratings and training. This would enable job
rotation, cross-functional job enrichment of the employees and retaining key talent from the
organization perspective.
What I have highlighted is just about the only thing relevant. Justification whether they are
following it is almost non-existent.
Ans 2. Infosys followed a performance based compensation structure
Compensation vs talent

Infosys maintained a bell curve to reward for compensation and talent.

The CRR system gave a significant variable pay compensation to a top performer (having
rating as CRR1 for 30% employees) to retain the top talent in the organization. This
salary is pretty much higher than the average salary offered by the competitors. Hence,
retaining its top performers
Infosys offered a median salary to the new employees while offering a high perceived
value of internal service to its employees
Infosys maintained a 25% variable pay which depends on company, vertical and
individual performance
Also, yearly nearly 15% increase was provided to all the employees
Most of the times, talent got swept away by companies who offered a significant higher
pay to employees having 2-5 years of experience
Infosys dropped issuing stock options as providing it created a significant disparity
between the employees

Ans 3.
Internal market for talent

5 areas of competencies were defined and a pyramid was defined for every employee so
that employee could move from one role to other
Company had a mix of behavioral, technical certifications(minimum certification points
criteria) with acts as a measure for the company to identify the employees that should be
promoted to the new positions
Employees training needs are identified by the manager. Also, virtual classroom training
sessions and online trainings are also provided by the company
Infosys has a 3 tier unique system to identify business leaders(Tier 1- mentored by Board
of directors), senior roles 1(Tier2) and senior roles2(Tier 3).Higher tiers would mentor
and coach the lower tiers to concentrate on succession planning(Tier 1) and career
planning(Tier 2 and 3)
Also, it provided ample opportunity for employees to move from one vertical to another
after staying for a period of at least 2 years in a project
It gave the flexibility to the employee to choose their area of interest in work
Employees could also register to trainings to broaden their skills
Also, employees could do a lot of internal projects to sharpen and broaden their current
set of competencies and skills

Example:
An employee moved from airline to new vertical of operations for an oil company client
The above technique provided ample scope and opportunity for the development of
employees within the organization, thereby creating a sufficient internal market for talent for
succession and career planning.
Can it work If, yes why?, If not why?
Ans 4.
Infosys is using BSC to measure performance of up to 32 items, seven of these items related
to talent such as competency development

Overly abstract Balanced Scorecard goals are easy to reach but hard to quantify. Also its
given in the case that there is a room for improving employees work-life balance, also
quantifying this abstract becomes an important factor which has not been considered.

All metrics should be applicable to Infosyss own situation. It is very important when
using balanced scorecards to make the information being tracked applicable to your needs.
Otherwise, the metrics will be meaningless

BSC is incapable to answer the questions related to the competitors movements. The
management of Infosys need to assess how the external changes affect the
implementation of BSC

Over dependence on metrics like % attrition, employee satisfaction score, Annual

employee satisfaction index. Wrong metrics can affect business results.

Its a little more difficult to demonstrate direct impact of HR or talent management efforts
on financial performance.