HR ineffeciency * PROBLEM AREAS IDENTIFIED

1.With the company’s growing size, the company became more process oriented and started leveraging its experience to perform repeatable projects, employees realized that they were being deprived of creative and technical ingenuity that had been inherent in their work during the initial years. Employees thought the organization was becoming more impersonal and that some of the perks of initial years were being repealed.

2.As the company started scaling up across multiple locations, Infosys articulated the core values it believed in and wanted every employees to adhere to through the acronym “C- LIFE”: customer delight, leadership by example ,integrity & transparency, fairness and pursuit of excellence. They wanted to stick to their core values even when the company was expanding to new territories.

3.The company also showed high employee turnover when it was expanding its operations, which was mainly due to lack of proper communication between the middle/higher level managers and the lower level employees.

4. The introduction of “variable pay” was a great step in the direction of improving performance but it was not properly supported or backed with a good means to support this change. Infosys did not properly communicate the concept to the employees that a section of the employees were sceptical about the company’s intentions.

5. The broad-banding policy that was a leap towards a role based organization again was a tipping point at which employees’ dissatisfaction and discontent at Infosys reached its peak.

RECOMMENDATIONS ARRIVED AT

1. Understanding the very fact that work was becoming monotonous and repeatable, lacking any fun or creativity, the HR team attempted to address this discontent by making the workplace more fun and meaningful. Aware of the fact that most of the employees were straight from collage, they created a collage like environment, facilitating fun through events like quizzes, DJ nights, dances and an employee social service group ,which required purely voluntary participation .The HR team thought a fun environment will burn the stress from work and make them feel at collage, having more events and ,a social service group that would bring a better meaning to their lives. They started reemphasizing the traditional culture-its small –company feel and collegial environment, where processes and policies where flexible and customized to individual needs.

2. The company strongly articulated values and tried to practice them during every interaction. They expected everyone to be value champions, people who communicate values to others, new comers, colleagues, juniors by their own examples.

3. The company tried its best to fit the employees into its culture, it even started two types of induction programs, one for the “fresher’s” –who were fresh collage pass outs the other for professionals with prior experience, who were joining Infosys.

4. The variable pay was introduced with three components: company performance, unit performance and individual performance. This system helped reinforce the company’s high-performance work ethic; and helped Infosys compete with multinationals offering higher packages.

5. The Broad –banding policy helped the employees understand exactly what his/her role was as well as the role he wanted to move to. It also helped to create an equitable framework for people related decision making.

POSTIVE AND NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

1. Though creating fun and community empathy at workplace helped to recreate a collage environment to the fresh executives and it lighted their spirits. But the redundancy and routine nature of their jobs remained the same; they were still deprived of creative and technical ingenuity.

2. Infosys tried to instil an Infosys culture that truly was appreciable because it will bind all the “Infoscions” and create a strong corporate culture .But execution of C-LIFE remained a challenge across the organization .TO maintain the company’s value system, it tried to recruit and hire employees based on their potential fit with company’s culture and values. But this became a challenge, as Infosys did not want to be constrained by lack of resources in its pursuit of growth.

3. The company put in lot of efforts to bind the people to common culture, but the diversity and disparity of the employee hierarchy was only becoming apparent .Middle level / senior level managers were not in touch with the rapidly changing realities of employees who were doing less interesting work than the mangers and had not been richly rewarded .Managers also found it difficult to practice a very hands on management approach and struggled to delegate effectively their responsibilities .As a result Infosys had to deal with increased employee turnover in the same era when their operations were expanding. It also led to an increase in employee costs because of the need to build up recruiting efforts.

4. The variable pay system helped the Infosys compete more effectively in the war of talents with the multinational firms; it also helped Infosys improve its performance over time. But this compensation change received mixed reaction from employees. Some were sceptical of the company’s intentions and thought it as a way for the company to reduce the compensation costs.

5. The broad-banding helped creating a rationale for moving towards a role- based organization .It helped compare jobs, facilitated career planning and also introduced objectivity to the process. But the rapidly changing HR policies bred confusion among employees and mangers alike. Most managers were unsure of certain aspects of change and could not face scrutiny of employees. This fostered misinformation and rumours which led to further discontent and lack of trust between some employees.

MEASURES TO MITIGATE THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

1. The redundancy in the work could have been tracked by giving the employees more responsibilities, more recognitions and more complex work that make them feel valued and motivate them to achieve and contribute more to the organization rather than focussing only on creating fun in the organization that may only create no dissatisfaction. But satisfaction can only be brought about by giving more power, affiliation and achievement

2. The company should have found and established a trade off between the culture and values and resources, so that culture do not come in its way in the pursuit of growth by limiting resources.

3. The senior and the middle level managers had and “avoiding” kind of conflict handling approach with less concern for both the management and employees. They neither practiced a hands-on management approach nor were they able to motivate employees and give them recognition and value which could have kept them committed to the organization, even when multinational firms offered better global brand and compensation packages. So an “integrating “conflict handling styles with high concern for the organization and the employees would have helped the company to sustain and commit its employees to the company.

4. The variable pay was a smart move from the company’s side but it was not effectively backed with approaches helping in overcoming resistance to change. Here employees were sceptical mainly due to lack of awareness or information.
Better education and communication could have helped better adapt the employees to the new system.

5. Broad -banding was the tripping point at which employee dissatisfaction and discontent at Infosys reached its perk. it was mostly due to lack of communication that led to a lot of misinformation and rumours which further resulted in discontent and lack of trust between some employees. This could have been controlled by effective education, communication, facilitation and support.