The high attrition levels witnessed by India?s second largest IT services exporter Infosys is having a more telling effect at its onsite locations in the US and Europe with a larger number of employees leaving the organisation. This has created a tough situation for the IT major as it is impacting client relationships and hampering their efforts in bagging new business.
According to sources familiar with the situation, the attrition rate of onsite employees has gone up substantially over the past two quarters and it is much higher than Infosys? overall average of 18.7% for FY14.
?Many of these onsite employees have worked for a project for some time and learnt the business requirements at a certain level. Such employees are not easy to replace all of a sudden at the current level of attrition. And there are not many H-1B visas available to send new people to client locations,? a company executive said on condition of anonymity.
The H-1B visa is a non-transferable document and any Indian IT company is often put in a difficult situation if any of the employees resign in the US with this work permit in hand. An email request seeking responses from Infosys remained unanswered at the time of going to press.
The 18-month rotational policy for its onsite employees by Infosys is considered to be the problem. Under this system, most of the employees who complete a year in their onsite stint start looking for jobs outside Infosys before they are supposed to be back in India as per the rotation policy.
There has been instances in which all of the onsite employees of a particular project have put in their papers at the same time. This has created a bigger problem for Infosys as it has led to a lack of confidence among many clients who are rethinking on continuing their business with the IT major. It is not a very uncommon practise for many of the competitors to highlight their rival?s high attrition rate while bidding for contracts.
Viju George of JP Morgan, a brokerage house, said, ?Attrition at the mid-level hurts in execution and day-to-day operations. We believe Infosys will have to ensure that its attrition-controlling measures have the desired effect as quickly as possible.?
