Roughly 58% of over two lakh Infosys employees have received at least one dose of the vaccine, the company said on Wednesday, July 14, while announcing its results for the quarter ending June 30, 2021. About 10% of employees have received both doses, COO Pravin Rao said. “Employee well-being is of paramount importance to us and we have had multiple interventions in this regard including facilitating vaccination for them and their dependents. We rolled out several intense employee engagement initiatives including career acceleration opportunities, compensation reviews and learning and development interventions.”
Rao said the company has administered over 2.3 lakh doses to 1.2 lakh-plus employees, with the remaining being dependents. In addition, he said the company has placed an order for over 5 lakh doses. In other markets, he said the percentage of vaccinated employees is higher. The issue the company is facing, however, he added, was not the supply of vaccines but that roughly 50% of employees are no longer in the cities where the company has its development centres and are dispersed.
“Their homes are in tier-2 and tier-3 cities and while we have tie-ups with hospitals to administer vaccines to those people wherever required, they are also relying on vaccine availability in their own regions and trying to get vaccinated,” he said. In terms of returning to office, he said they expect in the course of the quarter that there will be some amount of increase in the number of people coming to office to work. Pravin Rao added that 98% of employees globally work from home, and 99% in India.
“One thing is certain, the future will be hybrid where people will have flexibility to work from home or office. It will depend on people's inclination, client requirement and on the nature of the product. From our perspective, we are very well equipped.. It is difficult to figure out what percentage of people would like to work from the office and work-from-home,” he added.
“Our efforts over the next couple of quarters will be to slowly start getting more and more people to work from the office even though it will be in a hybrid model,” he stated.
He, however, did note that there was hesitancy to return to work, primarily due to safety concerns and also depending on geography. “One of the things we have realised is where employees are in the same locations where the campuses are located, there is much more willingness for people to come. back We are also looking at flexibility rather than in a big bang approach, and we are also trying to do it in a phased manner,” he said.
The company’s challenge, he added, was for employees who had moved away from tier-1 cities and back to their hometowns. “There is greater reluctance because they are not sure whether there will be an advent of third wave, whether they have to switch back to work from home and so on,” he said.
Outlining the company’s plans, he said the company’s plan is to start small at 8-12 weeks, and encourage people to come on a voluntary basis and create a safe environment. “Based on that learning we will fine tune it and we are confident that in 3-6 months, we should be able to address any concerns that employees have and encourage them to come back to office as required depending on the nature of work,” he said. Infosys' headcount stood at 2,67,953 people at the end of June 2021 quarter.