Infosys tightens appraisal process, defers increment till July

Infosys, India’s second largest IT (information technology) firm, has deferred salary hikes for its mid-level employees till end of July to reduce cost and ensure better payouts at the same time. Some employees may even get salary hike after July.

Employees with less than eight years of experience who fall under job level 5 (JL5) category will see their performance and salary review begin from July, Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, Infosys, told employees in a mail on Wednesday.

Amidst fears of job losses across different IT services firms, Rao said the company would not look at any layoffs and any separation may have happened on ground of performance.

Under the eight years experience bracket roles are typically software engineers, senior software engineers, business analyst, senior business analyst and others and industry experts say such roles form 40 to 50 per cent of the workforce at the IT companies. Infosys had more 2 lakh employees at the end of March.

A company spokesperson declined to comment on this development.

Even if Infosys has undertaken an exercise for mid-level professionals to scrutinise their performance with increased focus on automation and digital technology-driven service demand, the company ruled out any plans of layoffs in big numbers.

The company earlier said it was putting in cost optimisation measures across different operational activities and on-site utilisation.

Indian firms are witnessing slowest growth in a decade due to automation, technology shifts and increased protectionism in its main markets. Global firms are shifting their budgets from traditional IT services to digital technology areas such as cloud, which requires engineers to engage clients than work remotely. Also, low-end maintenance work is increasingly getting automated which is forcing companies to shift them to other projects and reduce hiring from campuses.

More software services firms struggle to deal with challenges such as slow-paced growth in business, changing client demand with more outcome-based business and immigration issues across different markets including the US.