Infosys to replace Indian staff overseas with local talent

With an increasing protectionist stance in the US, Infosys has decided to replace its Indian staff working overseas with local talent. But while recruitment is on track overseas, back home increments and hiring are frozen and employee numbers dipped reports CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena.

Infosys is going slow on hiring, and plans no increments or salary cuts for its offshore employees. Infosys will maintain its onsite-offshore mix but will look at replacing Indian employees with local talent. It attributes this change in stance to a soft job market and the pressure of protectionism overseas.

Says Mohandas Pai, Member of Board & Director-HR, Infosys, "It will be a replacement in the sense that you will have a person hired locally to work there replacing a deputy who goes from here. So to the extent that you will not add to the on site staff if there is no work so it will be a replacement."

Infosys says there will be no difference in the salaries given to locals or Indians.It's headcount seems to have marginally fallen by 1% this quarter. Reason, low gross additions at 3538, a 39% drop from 4935 last quarter. Another reason is the outplacement of 617 non-performers and an exit of 750 employees. But Infosys says that days of poaching by competitors are over and the employees had left the company for further education.

“If you look at people who left us to go to other companies, the percentage actually comes down. Normally it is about 45% and right now it has come down to maybe about 18%,“ Pai said. The good news is that no salary cut is expected for now. Infosys is betting big on investment for sales and marketing, it will honour all its hiring commitments, but tread a cautious path till mid 2010 by when it expects recovery returning to the IT sector.