Recession Continues

Infosys Technologies has fired over 2,100 people across the country, post an annual performance appraisal exercise concluded mid-March. T V Mohandas Pai, head of the company’s HR, said that based on the performance 2,100 employees had left Infosys. The tolerance for non-performance has come down to zero. The appraisal was conducted for 60,000 of our employees. At the bottom, some 3.5% of the people were either out placed or left the company. It is an annual scenario after every performance assessment. Trainees were not part of this exercise. Outplacement is a new jargon used by enterprises, which means offloading excess/unwanted staff to another employer.

However, out placing is not a viable option in the current scenario where few jobs are available in the market. Infosys currently has an employee base of 1,05,000 which includes 45,000 trainees who were not part of this appraisal exercise. During the quarter ended December 31, the company had a total headcount of 1,03,078. A quarter ago, Infosys had said it would hire 26,000 new people during fiscal 2008-09, more than what it had projected in the beginning of the year. During the third quarter, the company made a gross addition of 5,997 with the net intake being 2,772. Infosys has made offers to around 20,000 engineering graduates for the current year. The company has been vocal about honoring all the offers it made to freshers.