Infosys relaunches ESOPs to rein in attrition

Launches programme as it looks to rein in rising attrition that stood at 21% in the April-June 2016 quarter

Infosys has relaunched its employee stock option plan (ESOP) for junior to middle-level management staff as it looks to rein in rising attrition that stood at 21 per cent in the April-June quarter.

However, the company is not "unduly concerned" about the jump in attrition, which read 17.3 per cent in the March quarter and 19.2 per cent in the year-ago period.

"Today, we relaunched our ESOP programme after a gap of 10-years plus, after about 13 years. We are rewarding about 7,500 of our employees from junior to middle-level management with restricted stock options and we will extend it to middle management to senior leaders and title holders subsequently," Infosys chief operating officer U B Pravin Rao said.

He added the company continues to focus on reskilling employees and has also revamped its leadership development programmes.

Infosys added 13,268 (gross) and 3,006 (net) people in the said quarter, taking its headcount to 197,050 at the end of June.

Elaborating on the higher rate of attrition, Rao said one of the reasons is "seasonality because typically in Q1, we have higher exits due to higher studies".

He added that while the attrition levels have shot up, Infosys has been able to retain "high-performers".

"We are really encouraged, we also track high-performers' attrition, which has come down. Earlier last quarter, it was 13.4 per cent and this quarter, it has come down to 11.2 per cent, so we are encouraged by that," he said.

Rao said Infosys will "watch out", but at this stage, it is "not unduly concerned" and continues to focus on employee experience and engagement.

This year, Infosys has given wage hikes of six-12 per cent to its employees in India and about two per cent to onsite workers, apart from offering ESOP to incentivise top performers.

Infosys, which is undergoing a turnaround under Sikka's leadership, has been witnessing a string of senior leaders quitting the firm.

These exits include high-profile names like former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, head of manufacturing and EVP (executive vice-president) Sanjay Jalona, Infosys BPO (business process outsourcing) head and EVP Gautam Thakkar, and Infosys EdgeVerve head and EVP Michael Reh.

The most recent exit was that of Samson David, Infosys' head of cloud, infrastructure and security business.

David, who had joined Infosys as a trainee software engineer in 1992, had been recently tasked by Sikka to spearhead the company's flagship artificial intelligence platform, Mana.
What is an employee stock option?

An employee stock option (ESO) is a stock option granted to specified employees of a company. ESOs carry the right, but not the obligation, to buy a certain amount of shares in the company at a predetermined price. Employees typically must wait a specified vesting period before being allowed to exercise the option.

What is vesting?

Vesting gives an employee rights to employer-provided assets over time, which gives the employee an incentive to perform well and remain with the company.