Infosys to give 5-7 % salary increase

BANGALORE: Infosys will give an average of 5% to 7% salary increase for employees between job levels 2 and 6. Level 2 comprises junior employees, including non-engineering graduates and customer support executives, and level 6 are project managers and senior project managers.

For job levels 7 and 8, including delivery managers and above, the compensation increase is still being worked out. The increments will be effective April 1.

Some of these details were announced by chairman N R Narayana Murthy at a Jam session at the company’s Electronics City campus last week, and the same was also communicated to all employees through the intranet on Tuesday.

When TOI contacted Infosys on the matter, the company spokesperson said, “We will announce the salary increments for FY 2015 during our financial results announcement on April 16, 2014. The new salary hikes come nine months after we announced our last salary increases in July 2013.”

In the last two years, increments were delayed, following the company’s mediocre performance. Last year it was given effective July, soon after Murthy’s return to the company. The year before that it was given in October. Murthy had said recently that the company would return to the April-March cycle this year.

Last year, there was an average 8% increase in salaries for employees in India and 3% for those based overseas. The global sales team was given an 8% increase effective May 1. In October, the company also gave promotions, with salary increases, to 12,000 people.

Infosys’ attrition rate at 18.1% in the December quarter is higher than the 17.3% in the September quarter and 15.1% in the year-ago quarter. This higher attrition , the firm’s improved performance in recent quarters and the general improvement in the demand environment for the IT industry would have made a salary increase inevitable this year. But in a context where companies like TCS and Cognizant are doing much better and likely to provide higher increments, whether Infosys’ 5-7 % would have the desired effect is not clear.

“With improved demand for IT services and firms benefiting from rupee depreciation, employees are expecting an average hike of 10%-12 %, factoring in inflation. But with IT companies renegotiating contracts and driving cost optimization initiatives, a moderate wage hike would help offset higher operational costs,” said Sunil Goel, MD of executive search firm Globalhunt India.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, president in staffing firm Randstad India, said, “Companies offering a sub-10 % salary hike should have strong non-monetary benefits like stock options or learning and development opportunities to retain employees.”