Infosys to roll out incentive scheme for staff with digital skills

Infosys will roll out an incentive scheme this year for employees equipped with digital skills and will aggressively re-deploy staff on projects offering opportunities to work on new technologies as it looks to stem rising attrition in the face of stricter visa rules, a top executive has said. Infosys COO Pravin Rao, during a recent investor call, said Infosys’ localisation efforts have helped its business become “much more resilient and less susceptible to the visa regime than in the past”. “This is an effort we need to continue till we get to the 50 per cent mark,” he said.

In January, Infosys had said it has already hired over 7,600 staff in the US - more than three-fourths of its target of recruiting 10,000 American workers. It had also spoken about making recruitment from local schools a "sustained effort" in the region.

North America is the largest market for the Bengaluru-based firm, accounting for 61.2 per cent of its revenue.

Infosys announced its fourth quarter financials on Friday reporting a 10.5 per cent growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 4,078 crore, and a 19.1 per cent increase in revenue at Rs 21,539 crore in the March 2019 quarter from the year-ago period.

The Bengaluru-based company, which has forecast its FY20 topline growth to be 7.5 - 9.5 per cent in constant currency terms, added 2,622 people (net) during the March 2019 quarter to take its total headcount to over 2.28 lakh. "... attrition has marginally gone up from 17.8 per cent to 18.3 per cent on a standalone basis. A big part of the attrition is for people with 3-5 years' experience and to this set of people, the earlier value proposition was onsite opportunity," he said.

Rao explained that given the "mobility challenges" due to restrictive visa regimes, such opportunities are "fewer".