Infosys asks some staff back in office 10 days a month, bucks global trend

By Sankalp Phartiyal

Indian tech giant Infosys Ltd. is asking some employees to come in to the office 10 days a month, taking a more lenient approach than many of its global peers.
 

In an email to select employees in entry- to mid-level roles, the company asked them to come in for that minimum number of days, starting Nov. 20. Since the pandemic, they had been allowed to work remotely full-time, and the company’s other employees are still permitted to do so.

The internal missive, reported first in local media and verified by a company representative, followed co-founder Narayana Murthy’s controversial comment that young Indians should work 70 hours a week. The billionaire’s remarks, in an interview posted to YouTube, clashed with Infosys’s official stance on complete flexibility for employees wherever possible.

India’s IT services providers are following global tech rivals in asking workers to return, seeking to boost efficiencies as demand for their services sputters. Infosys last month trimmed its full-year sales forecast and warned it’s suspending some hiring, suggesting the global technology spending slump has room to run.

Larger Indian rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. asked many employees to return to the office for five days a week, starting Oct. 1. In the US, Amazon.com Inc. has cracked down on employees who have ignored its request for them to come in three days a week, while Alphabet Inc.’s Google has received puchback for its similar mandate.

Read more about how companies are dealing with return-to-office

On an earnings call last month, Infosys Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh said more employees are returning to offices even as the company has kept its flexible policy.

“There are some instances, for example, with specific client work or specific type of engagement where we feel it’s better that everyone is working together,” he said. “But in general, our view is we want to support this flexible approach. It’s something that we believe is appropriate given how we’ve set up the work-from-home infrastructure.”