With low visibility on future business volumes and rising number of employees in the December quarter, Infosys ended up with a net employee addition of 977, the firm?s second lowest number in a decade in this regard.
Utilisation rate at the firm for the period stood at 70.1%. During the peak of the economic downturn in the first quarter of FY10, the IT firm had a negative growth in net addition of 945 employees.
?The headcount is a reflection of our business needs. We have adjusted our recruitment according to these factors,? said S D Shibulal, CEO and managing director, Infosys. The company?s bench has grown by 7-8% and the increase in bench strength impacts margin in two ways. ?It adds to the net cost by 1.5% and an indirect margin loss of 2.5%,? Shibulal said. People on the bench, who remain unproductive, is a pointer to the volume of work coming into a company.
In the quarter, Infosys had a gross addition of 8,390 employees, which included 891 Lodestone employees. Lodestone is a Swiss consulting firm that Infosys acquired last year. The software services company said that the total attrition stood at 5,255 in Q2, which was down to 4,435 in Q3.
Nandita Gurjar, senior vice president and group head (HR) at the Bangalore-based company said, ?Hiring depends on the business that we are getting from different verticals. The hiring of laterals has increased because we have moved to consulting and products space.?
Typically, IT bigwigs maintain a bench strength of 10% of the total workforce to cover for any unforeseen projects. Gurjar pointed out that the company has started large scale training for reskilling its talent in the last two to three months. ?Today the needs of the market are not in line with the skills that we have in the company.?