Acting on the Central Government’s directive to investigate Infosys’ recent layoffs of freshers at its Mysuru campus, Karnataka Labour Minister Santosh Lad spoke with the company’s management on Thursday.
Lad met with senior officials from the Labour Department and Infosys at Bengaluru’s Vikas Soudha. He urged greater transparency in layoffs, consistent recruitment policies across IT firms, a stress-free work environment, and the challenges female employees face.
The minister told the company officials, “We don’t know what industry practices are because we don’t meet and discuss them frequently. We only meet for things like signing MOUs, but are yet to understand labour practices. We should have more interactions. You must build a consensus with the government so we are more aligned on the matter, because when people ask us questions we are clueless. Being a second-term minister, I’m trying to understand the process. Only when I sit and speak with you, I can upgrade myself, get better insights and analyse the complaints.”
Infosys management officials stated that the criteria for termination is over two consecutive years of under-performance.
“For performance-based terminations, we have a certain policy. If someone has been a low performer for two years continuously, we have a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). If they clear the 60-90 days PIP, they can continue with us. Otherwise, we show them a show-cause notice and issue them termination. It’s never sudden. We also call them and tell them they’re not performing. The person can always opt to resign and we give them additional months of salary so they can find a job somewhere else.”
This development comes after the IT labour union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labour & Employment on February 8, after Infosys laid off around 350 campus recruits. However, the latter clarified these were freshers who had failed to clear assessments.
- Also read: Infosys lays off around 350 freshers; cites assessment failures
Lad also highlighted complaints about the IT industry hiring aggressively, only to bench thousands and trim the workforce when projects decline to maintain profitability, to which the company officials replied the percentage of those being terminated annually is less than 1%. He said Infosys currently has 20,000-25,000 people on the bench.