Infosys set to join TCS in 1,00,000-employee club

A key milestone is just weeks away. The country's showpiece software giant, Infosys, is set to cross the one-lakh-employee mark, catching up with industry leader Tata Consultancy Services.

While the twosome together would be within kissing distance of worldwide headcounts at IBM or Accenture, the two global leaders are also putting pressure at home with their own aggressive hiring. Infosys now has 82,000 employees on its rolls, but clearly sights 100,000 after job offers made in 1,050 engineering colleges across India.

"We have given 18,000 offers. This shows our confidence in the business.
We will soon employ in excess of one lakh people in India," TV Mohandas Pai, director, human resources, Infosys told reporters in Mumbai. IT and business process firms together employ 20 lakh workers in India.

While IBM has 3.68 lakh employees and Accenture has 1.
72 lakh people on its rolls spread worldwide, TCS and Infosys have most of their employees based in India. Thanks to lower costs in India, IBM and Accenture have been expanding in India, prompting a war for talent that is yielding fruits for employees and mid-level managers.

Infosys is overhauling its manpower strategies to battle attrition. Under the new performance-linked pay structure, the difference in compensation between average and top performers would be 35 to 40 per cent.

This difference earlier was 15-20 per cent. "Our attrition is 13.
4 per cent and we want to get it in single digits," says Nandita Gurjar, group head, HR, Infosys. The company is planning to go for stringent employee assessment standards.

"We are tightening our assessment of top performers. We would also introduce variable pays for middle and senior-level management," said Pai.

Infosys has embarked on a hiring spree when there have been retrenchments in the IT sector due to a slowdown in the US economy (which contributes 70 per cent of Indian IT companies' revenues). "Headcount addition is in line with their guidance and shows the business confidence despite question marks over the US economy" said Apurva Shah, an IT analyst with Mumbai-based brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher.