infosys Limited, formerly Infosys Technologies Limited, (BSE: 500209, NSE: INFY, NASDAQ: INFY) is a global technology services company headquartered in Bangalore (Bengaluru), India. Infosys is the second largest IT company in India with 133,560 employees (including subsidiaries) as of March 2011.[1] Infosys is ranked 28th globally in the list of IT services providing firms.[2] It has offices in 33 countries and development centers in India, China, Australia, UK, Canada, Brazil and Japan.[3]The company offers software products for the banking industry and business process management services also provides end-to-end business solutions. Infosys Technologies has emerged as the best company to work for in India, according to the BT-Indicus-PeopleStrong 9th Annual Survey of India's Best Employers. Even as the Indian IT major shone, many other biggies missed getting into the list of the 10 best companies to work for in India. These include L&T (11th), Hindustan Unilever (12th), ONGC (13th), Tata Motors (14th), ITC (15th), ICICI Bank (19th), and Tata Steel (20th).
About 9,000 employees from across 1,000 organisations across 800 cities participated in the survey.
They were asked to rate companies on six key parameters, namely, career and personal growth, prestige/company reputation, training/coaching/mentoring, financial compensation and benefits, job content, and merit-based performance evaluation.
While creative people in advertising and media gave little importance to the company's brand value, the administrative staff gave more value to the brand.
The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance and Services accounted for over 10 per cent of the respondents each, software over 14 per cent, manufacturing over 17 per cent, and ITeS accounted for 9 per cent.
Education/training, core sector, telecom and health accounted for 6.7 per cent, 5.7 per cent, 4.4 per cent, and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Infosys Technologies was selected as the best employer to work for in 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2006. Infosys and its subsidiaries have 105,453 employees as on September 30, 2009.
Infosys, which hired 18,000 people in 2009-10, scores 100 on all parameters. Infosys is one of the most sought after companies in campuses. The rate of attrition at Infosys is 11.6 per cent, according to Business Today.

Working with Infosys is not a job. It's a journey. An experience. There's so much to explore here - even about yourself - that every day is a new day. You want a challenging and enjoyable work environment. We want you to realize your potential. You want to be recognized for your work. We want you to fulfill your aspirations.
Today, Infosys is building tomorrow's enterprise. And guess who's making this possible? Infoscions. Our people - yesterday, today and tomorrow. We believe there's a bit of an Infoscion in everyone. Is there one in you? Here's a little something we call...
Are great careers born or made? At Infosys, they are both born and made. Because when you're at Infosys, you're already at the next level. And we provide you with every possible opportunity to inspire you - to make you go beyond what you think might be possible. There's a wide range of information here - from internal job alerts to updates on career programs, from internal internship to career planning tools, from interaction with managers to leaders on careers. Empowerment and enlightenment are just a click away.
Since 2004, Infosys has embarked on a series of initiatives to consolidate and formalise its academic relationships worldwide under the umbrella of a program called AcE – Academic Entente.[15] Infosys' Global Internship Program, known as InStep, is one of the key components of the Academic Entente initiative. It offers live projects to interns from the universities around the world. InStep recruits undergraduate, graduate and PhD students from business, technology, and liberal arts universities to take part in an 8 to 24 week internship at one of Infosys' global offices. InStep interns are also provided career opportunities with Infosys.
In 1997, Infosys started the "Catch them Young Program", to expose the urban youth to the world of Information Technology by conducting a summer vacation program. The program is aimed at developing an interest and understanding of computer science and information technology. This program is targeted at students in Grade IX level.[16]

The company was well known for its employee friendly HR practices. Though Infosys grew to become a US$ 2 billion company by the year 2006, it still retained the culture of a small company. Infosys attracted the best talent from across the world, and recruited candidates by conducting one of the toughest selection process. All the selected candidates were required to go through an intensive 14 week training program. All the employees were required to undergo training every year, and some of the chosen employees were trained at the Infosys Leadership Institute to take on higher responsibilities in the company. Infosys was one of the first companies to offer ESOPs to its employees. The company followed variable compensation structure where the employees' compensation depended on the performance of individual, the team and the company. The case highlights many such best practices of Infosys in human resource management. It also discusses the challenges faced by the company to retain its talented workforce
On the company's HR practices, Nandan Nilekani (Nilekani), CEO, President and Managing Director of Infosys, commented, "It is about creating a highly motivated workforce because this is not a factory where you can monitor the quantum of output at the end of the day. But in the intellectual business you cannot do that. So, you have to create a motivated set of people who can operate.
"We believe that people are our core assets and their empowerment is the key to scalability and longevity. Respect, dignity, fairness and inclusiveness are essential to get the best out of employees"2
- Nandan Nilekani, CEO, President and Managing Director, Infosys, in 2006.
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The HR Practices
Most of the HR practices of Infosys were a result of the vision of its founders and the culture that they had created over the years. The founders advocated simplicity and maintained the culture of a small company. The employees were encouraged to share their learning experiences...
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Recruitment While recruiting new employees, Infosys took adequate care to identify the right candidates. On the qualities that Infosys looked for in a candidate, Nilekani said, "We focus on recruiting candidates who display a high degree of 'learnability.' By learnability we mean the ability to derive generic knowledge from specific experiences and apply the same in new situations.

We also place significant importance on professional competence and academic excellence. Other qualities we look for are analytical ability, teamwork and leadership potential, communication and innovation skills, along with a practical and structured approach to problem solving." |
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Training
Training at Infosys was an ongoing process. When new recruits from colleges joined Infosys, they were trained through fresher training courses. They were trained then on new processes and technologies. As they reached the higher levels, they were trained on project management and later were sent for management development programs, followed by leadership development programs
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Performance Appraisal The first step toward carrying out performance appraisal at Infosys was the evaluation of personal skills for the tasks assigned to an employee during the period of appraisal. To evaluate the performance, different criteria like timeliness, quality of work carried out by the employee, customer satisfaction, peer satisfaction, and business potential, were considered. The personal skills of the employees were also evaluated based on their learning and analytical ability, communication skills, decision making, change management, and planning and organizing skills. Each of these criteria was measured on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 signifying above the expected performance level and 5 below the expected performance level). |
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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is well known for its sound HR policies. The primary motive of this consulting firm is to make its employees knowledgeable about the on going practices in their respective domains. For this, it invests 4% of its annual revenue on training, development and other employee empowerment programs. Its learning centre at Trivandrum has state of the art facilities coupled with all modern day amenities to make learning fun. The other employee benefits which are offered here include house building loans, automobile loans, mentoring, career counseling, stress development programs and many more. TCS is reputed to be a world class employer which always cares for its employees and maintains sound yet flexible HR policies.