Infosys, which hired over 50,000 freshers last year, is not going to campus for recruitment for the time being, Chief Financial Officer Nilanjan Roy said, adding that the IT major will honour offers that have been made. On the return-to-office approach, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said the number of employees coming back to workspace is on the rise but asserted, in the same breath, that the company intends to maintain flexibility in its approach.
Infosys’ position on return to work is in variance to that of larger rival TCS, which has asked its 6.14 lakh-plus employees to work from offices, ending the practice of remote working that was necessitated by the pandemic. During the Q2 briefing, Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy said the Bengaluru-headquartered company has a significantly fresher bench and headroom for increasing utilisation, and hence it "is not going to campuses as yet". "Last year, we hired 50,000 freshers and hired ahead of demand…we still have a significant fresher bench… we are, of course, training them on Gen AI…but we still have a way to go on utilisation, and at the moment are not going to campuses as yet…we will monitor this every quarter looking at our future projections," he said.
That said, the company will honour all the offers made, onboarding them as projects come up. To a specific question on whether or not the company will go to campuses this year for hiring, Roy said, "As we see it, I don’t think it is likely that this year, we are going to be going…but we will watch it every quarter". On the return to work plans, Parekh said Infosys is clear that it wants to remain flexible in its approach with employees. "Having said that every quarter, every week, we are seeing more and more employees back into the campus. And we believe this will continue," he said. The company’s headcount stood at 3.28 lakh as of September 30, 2023. There are instances involving specific client work or specific types of engagement, where the company is more comfortable with everyone working together in the office, and in such situations, the employees are back, anyway, Parekh disclosed. "But, in general, our view is, we want to support this flexible approach. It’s something that we believe is appropriate given how we have set up the work-from-home infrastructure. And so, we will continue with it at this stage but there will be specific areas, be it projects or type of work for clients, when the need is there, the employees will be on campus," he said.