Covid-19 forces Infosys to halt hiring, hikes, promotions

Bengaluru, April 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) Covid-hit global software major Infosys has halted hiring, hikes and promotions, an official said on Monday.

"We have stopped hiring temporarily, frozen salary hikes (and) have also temporarily suspended all promotions. These, we believe, are no regret moves," said Infosys Chief Financial Officer Nilanjan Roy at the announcement of the company's Q4 and FY2019-20 results.

Roy also said the company has 'tremendous' other cost levers which will be seen in the due course.

U.B. Pravin Rao, Infosys' Chief Operating Officer, said the software major will honour all the commitments already made in terms of hiring, both from academic campuses and lateral entries.

"In terms of hiring, we will honour all the commitments we have made. Both on campus side as well as laterals," said Rao.

He highlighted that Infosys is not looking at any Covid-induced layoffs.

Similarly, the company is also not in a hurry to return all the workforce to operate from office.

"Not in a hurry to come to back to work. Phase one, less than 5 per cent employees will come back to work. Want to do this in a very gradual manner," Rao said.

Amid the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, Infosys will maintain physical distancing, sanitation and also explore testing facilities in offices when techies starting returning to office.

"In the future, we will always have a percentage of people working from home," observed Rao.

Despite the lockdown, the company has onboarded a few lateral hires remotely.

Interestingly, 6,000 trainees were sent back home from the company's Mysuru training centre who are currently getting trained remotely from their homes.

In Q4, 1,083 employees left the company.

Source: IANS