BANGALORE: IT major Infosys Technologies has targeted that 50% of its employees in onsite (client) locations would be local residents by as early as next year.
Infosys has 27,000 employees onsite, of which about a third are currently local hires. An analyst who attended the Infosys Analyst Meet in August said that the company plans to reach the 50% target by 2012-13 .
The company did not respond to an email questionnaire asking for information on the development. Given the high unemployment rates in the West, there is tremendous pressure on Indian IT outsourcing companies to not be perceived as only taking away Western jobs to lower cost destinations.
Of Infosys's 27,000 onsite employees, around twothirds are said to be in the US and the rest in other geographies like the UK, Continental Europe, China and West Asia. Overall, the company has over 1.3 lakh employees.
The analyst said that one of the major tasks for Nandita Gurjar, global head of HR in Infosys who recently relocated to the US, is to set the agenda for choosing the right talent from the region.
There has been political pressure, particularly in the US, to boost local employment . Srishti Anand, IT sector analyst at Angel Broking, who also attended the analyst meet, said that the major reason for the decision to boost local staff was the increasing number of visa rejections for Indian software engineers.
Infosys has in recent times been mired in visa controversies after an US employee of the company filed a lawsuit alleging misuse of the business visitor (B-1 ) visa programme to send employees for longterm work. H-1 B is the appropriate visa for long-term work and is more difficult to get.
Other analysts who attended the analyst meet said that another reason for the boost in local hiring is the new strategic direction the company is undertaking called Infosys 3.0. Under this, the company has been restructured along three service lines-business operations , which includes traditional commoditized services like application development and maintenance, testing, BPO; transformation, which includes 'change the business' initiatives like package implementation and consulting; and innovation, which includes new products and platforms.
Currently, business operations contributes 63% of revenues , transformation brings in 25% and innovation 12%. The goal is to have each contributing around one third of revenue in the next 5-7 years. This calls for greater emphasis on skill sets such as consulting and business intelligence (BI), as well as innovation . In some of these areas, local labour is better equipped to handle clients than their Indian counterparts.
Analysts do not expect margins to be impacted significantly owing to the higher labour costs in the US. Indian employees who work at US sites are paid as per US regulations, receive allowances and also entail one-time visa costs. Hence the labour differential with a local hire is not very large.
