Infosys campus, Bangalore: It is quite likely that Infosys' return as a good place to work has more to do with the Rs 100 crore it carved up among employees as a special bonus earlier this year

Food for thought : The real test for Infosys will be its ability to stay in The Bes Companies To Work For In India through this up-cycle and the next downturn

Infosys technologies has no business being here, #2 in The Best Companies To Work For In India, 2004. The Bangalore-based company that currently employs 32,949 and could end the year (2004-05) with revenues between Rs 7,132 crore and Rs 7,160 crore may be the favourite of investors on d-street-the stock is up 28.5 per cent since January 1, 2004-and it will probably go down in Indian history as the trendsetter as far as creating millionaires out of its employees but, to repeat that original statement, it has no business being in The Best Companies To Work For In India, 2004.

This magazine said as much in an article accompanying its survey of the best companies to work for in India last year (See The Infosys Effect, Business Today, September 14, 2003), listing 10 reasons from the nature of the industry through the kind of work the company does to unreasonable employee-expectations why a company such as Infosys could never hope to be a great place to work. Its presence in this listing, thus, can mean only one of two things. We were wrong in 2003 or the company has managed to address almost all of the issues highlighted then. Given that the first is not really possible-the article was based on conversations with Infosys, other software companies large and small, companies in other knowledge industries such as pharmaceuticals, and cold, hard data-it can only be concluded that Infosys has indeed managed the second. For an organisation that has managed to add 10,000 employees over the past six months, that is something.

At the core of the company's comeback are efforts targeted at rationalising employee expectations, especially those regarding compensation and career progression, and a late-2003 organisational restructuring that effectively broke up Infosys into 17 smaller Infosyses. Although this magazine listed 10 reasons last year, the most important ones revolve around managing employee expectations, coping with rapid growth, and retaining the 'look and feel' of a small company even while becoming a large one. Clearly, Infosys is reaping the benefits of these measures. However, given what this writer has written about software professionals in the past-the details concern them being selfish, immature and unreasonable; no offense meant; even journalists would be the same were demand for them going through the roof-it is quite likely that Infosys' return as a good place to work has more to do with the Rs 100 crore it carved up among employees as a special bonus earlier this year when its revenues crossed a billion dollars (Rs 4,600 crore at today's exchange rate) and with its better-than-expected financial results over the past several quarters.

The way Hema Ravichandar, Senior VP (Group hr), Infosys Technologies, sees it, the company has learnt to cope with growth and scale. "We have been doubling our size, in terms of people every 12 to 18 months since 1996," she explains. "Managing scale, size and complexity was a huge challenge; we had to make our (hr) systems and processes more robust." "What worked with 10,000 people might not work with 30,000," adds Nandan Nilekani, CEO, explaining the need for creating the 17 smaller Infosyses that he has taken to referring as "new engines for growth".

At the end of this phase of restructuring the organisation and its hr systems-many of these were work in progress when the last edition of this survey was done, the pangs of change being another reason the company proffers for its performance in it-Infosys has a mere five layers of employees, as opposed to 15 earlier. It has increased the component of variable pay in compensation. And rather than being promoted on the basis of the number of years they have spent with the company, as was the case in the past, employees are now promoted on the basis of the positions available and their suitability for these. Along the way, the hr department has begun to align itself with business requirements. "We now have hr people embedded into various teams and reporting into the line function parallely," says Ravichandar. "This helps us to anticipate and respond to the unique requirements of different parts of the organisation."

The company's efforts have not gone unnoticed. "The impressive thing about the whole exercise is that Infosys was able to identify and fix problems before they became full-blown ones," says Gautam Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech, an it recruitment and placement company. However, as with most other large companies in the software services business, it is Infosys' ability to stay ahead of the curve as far as business is concerned that will determine its equity as a recruiting brand. "Infosys is one company in India that has a decent shot at becoming global," says Aditya Nath Jha, Group Manager, Brand & Communication, who signed on with the company in February 2004. "It is at an interesting point where it has had to re-work many of the strategies that made it successful until now."

Infosys' initiatives seem to have helped its cause as a good company to work for. However, the good times the software business has seen lately has brought with it a fresh batch of worries for Ravichandar. Attrition, at 7 per cent at the end of 2003-04, is up to 10.4 per cent, although the company points out that this is still half the industry norm. The real test for Infosys, however, will be its ability to stay in The Best Companies To Work For In India through this up-cycle and the next downturn.

INTERVIEW/Nandan Nilekani/President & CEO "HR will continue to be a focus area for us"

Last year's troubles seem to be a thing of the past. Infosys seems to have made a strong comeback... Infosys has always been ahead of the curve in setting industry benchmarks in all areas and hr is no exception. Yes, last year we did have certain issues. However, we implemented a number of measures, including collapsing the number of employee bands from 15 to five to make it more of a role-based paradigm. When we became a billion-dollar company, we shared the fruits of our success with our employees by distributing Rs 100 crore in bonus. HR has always been and will continue to be a focus area for us. As Infosys grows rapidly, what are the challenges it will face? As we increasingly become a multi-geographical, multi-cultural organisation, the key factor to ensure is continued fairness and transparency. Managing scale is a challenge. However, we should be able to reach out to employees at an individual level. Also, for the first time last year, we grew inorganically with the acquisition of Expert Systems, which is now Infosys Australia. Then there is Infosys Consulting where the profile of the people is radically different from that of Progeon (Infosys' BPO ARM). So, I even look into an integration index with our subsidiaries.