Infosys banking on skilling, incentives to counter attrition
IT major Infosys Ltd is planning to battle high attrition levels with skilling programs and compensation-based incentives, as per a media report.
As per the report, the attrition rate at Infosys was 23.4% in the April-June quarter, up from 20.4% in the previous quarter. This is much higher than its competitor Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, where attrition rate stood at 11.5% in the June quarter.
In order to counter the rising attrition levels, Infosys has taken various steps in terms of skilling its workforce and is putting a lot of emphasis on training. Infosys has created something called digital tags—essentially digital skill sets that you can learn and tag yourself to. The company has identified a set of 32 skill sets in areas such as cloud architecture and internet of things, wherein it has created specific learning pathways for each of these skills sets. The employees get a certification and a skill tag and are also incentivized through a skill bonus.
In addition, Infosys is also focusing on early career growth of employees with incentives such as “early career rewards" so that they are clear about their growth path within the organization in the first few years itself.
The company has also launched “bridge programs", which enable employees to pick up alternative skills, which in turn lead to higher compensation. The scheme is expected to help in upskilling to meet the demands of the future as well as open up more career options, especially for young employees.
While the IT major does not offer any ‘intrapreneurship’ programs, but it has something called the Infosys Innovation Lab and hackathons where it helps create proof of concepts.
While India’s technology sector continues to lay off employees lacking required skills, companies are also busy recruiting those with the right skill sets. This is reflected in the hiring trend of the top Indian information technology companies which touched an eight-year high of 78,500 this year. Reskilling is indeed an important factor looked upon by employees when charting their growth path in the company. High attrition has negative impacts like higher recruitment costs, dissatisfaction among the employees, lower client satisfaction, and lower utilization. However, reskilling alone might not be enough to retain talent that can easily get bigger pay hikes when they switch a job.