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Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani speaks to BT's Rahul Sachitanand on the company's people practices. Excerpts: Is the employee profile of Infosys changing as it transforms itself into a multi-national? How do you manage such a wide cross-section of people? We are recruiting people all over the world today; we are hiring people for our Chinese operations, Infosys Australia, Consulting operations and freshers from American colleges. We have around 1,000 foreigners and this will increase significantly over the next decade as Infosys becomes a truly global company. While Infosys has evolved to a company of over 46,000 people, we have learnt to identify our core values at Infosys and build our people practices around them. How critical is it for a company like Infosys to develop a strong middle management? Do mid-managers have a long-term career at the company? Infosys is a professionally run company and the founders are all first generation entrepreneurs. None of our children will inherit the company, so we have to focus on developing the next generation of leaders. Initiatives such as the Investment in the Learning Centre in Mysore are part of the plan to create a second-rung of leadership than can take over at the right time. We have all worked for other companies and we know what it's like to work under someone. I don't believe that there's any limit to how high a professional manager can go at Infosys. We have aspired to create a company that's based on fairness and meritocracy and we believe that we have been successful in doing so. All employees have an opportunity to grow and we believe that we give our employees a affair chance to grow and share in wealth creation. Infosys' founders continue to hold several key management posts 25 years after the company was formed. Do you need to democratise top management? Infosys is a fair and democratic employer and no one is being held back from their natural career growth path. In that sense, I don't think Infosys is different from any other organisation and I believe it is an aspirational brand to work with. There's a strong accent on skill development within the company and strong leaders will be given their due. You have over 46,000 employees today and are hiring by the thousands. How do you keep an individual Infoscion from getting lost in the crowd? We have to drive the benefit of both scale and the spirit of "smallness" that we try and foster within Infosys. We have broken up the company into several smaller units and I try and meet as many people as I can personally. I just held a 90-minute meeting with managers and then had lunch with them to connect with the work they were doing and the problems they faced. We are an employee-centric organisation and we believe in developing systems that nurture employees and create (potential) leaders of tomorrow. There is a defined career path for each Infoscion and senior managers will mentor them on reaching their targets.
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