Infosys was founded by Narayan Murthy and his team in 1981, and soon acquired the status of India’s largest IT company, spreading its branches both nationally and internationally. Being one of the very few companies in the world and the only company in India to have over 1 lakh employees, Infosys has truly witnessed unparalleled success and growth. A few years back, however, soon after the retirement of its CEO, N. R. Narayan Murthy, it began to encounter some serious difficulties in the international market, forcing him to re-join, thereby, going against the company’s normal terms and conditions. His main objective was to run the operations of Infosys successfully until it finds another competent leader.
With the appointment of Vishal Sikka as the new CEO in June 2014, people thought that Infosys would once again grow as it had done for many years under the able-leadership of Murthy. Even though, Infosys registered higher growth in terms of financial performance after Sikka took over the leadership, what came to be a serious concern for the new CEO was the rather high attrition rate of the company. As per reports, close to 8,900 employees left Infosys in the third quarter of 2014. Albeit he attrition rate has seemingly come down since the last quarter, it still remains close to 20 percent. Sikka, the man known for his proactive approach, has thus been forced to roll the dice once again.
This time around, he has come up with a rather attractive plan. As an effort to reduce the high attrition rate, the new CEO has decided to gift iPhone 6 to 3000 top performers of the company. Recently, he wrote an e-mail to all the employees, informing them of the company’s new plan, in which he addressed all of them as “Friends”.
The mail read: “Thinking back about 2014 makes feel good, doesn’t it? There was so much that wanted to accomplish with seemingly so little time to do it all. Now, as you stand on the brink of the New Year and look back, there is the satisfying realization that a great part of it actually got done. This feeling is not unlike the one Kahlil Gibran evokes in his lyrical commentary on work- ’When you work, you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music’.”
Sikka stated that achieving what Infosys did in the previous year “took your boundless energy and extraordinary effort“. He further added in his mail: “And I believe it’s not enough that we simply recognize it, we must celebrate it. That’s why I am so happy that we are presenting you with a Holiday Bonus- the cool new Apple iPhone 6. A gift that’ll always remind you and your teammates of the exceptional value you delivered for Infosys.”
His announcement of giving iPhones to the employees has come at a time when Infosys is going through a tough time in terms of retaining its employees. Although it will take another quarter to see how the CEO’s latest effort to woo the employees actually fares, it is bound to enthuse the employees, at least temporarily.
Bhupendra Sharma
Image Source: [Google]