Infosys asks employees to save $10 each

In yet another example by an Indian corporate to become cost-sensitive, IT bellweather Infosys Technologies is asking all its employees to go in for a one-time cost savings of $10 each.

This initiative is expected to help the company, which has over 100,000 people on its rolls, to incur a cost saving of $1 million (around Rs 5 crore), which is a ‘substantial amount’ according to the company.

The employees have been communicated about this through an internal mail from the company’s CEO and MD S (Kris) Gopalakrishnan. ““If each one of us is able to identify a savings of even $10-not just per day or per month-but $10 as a one-time effort from each one of us, that would translate to a saving of close to $1,000,000. I urge each one of you as a key stakeholder of the company’s success, to examine your work environment and look at opportunities that will optimise utilisation and control expenditure,” says the mail.

On being asked, the company agreed that such a letter has been issued to the employees. The company said it was issued basically to stress the message among the employees to focus on cost cutting. “The overall message is - don’t think any expense is a small expense and don’t unnecessarily spend money. Because it’s a tough time. We had never seen a time like this earlier,” V Balakrishnan, CFO, Infosys Technologies told Business Standard.

Infosys has already taken a lot of cot cutting measures. The company has recently announced an initiative as per which if an employee reaches office before 8 am throughout a month, he will get a cash award of about Rs 500 per month.

The move is aimed at increased utilisation of its transport services and beat the traffic which will result in higher productivity for the company. The company operates several buses to transport its employees. “This is to make sure that the buses are full. The capacity usage of the buses is very low at the moment,” added Bala.

The Bangalore-based company has also cut down various discretionary expenses which includes brand building expenses and sales & marketing. “ We are looking at cutting down some of the discretionary expenses. The travel cost has already come down significantly. However, we are not cutting any necessary expenses on things like training and R&D,” said Gopalakrishnan.