Wednesday, December 26, 2012

ASEAN India Students Exchange Programme: Day 3, Hyderabad

Today was an early day for the Thai and Vietnamese group. Their flight saw a 6 am start so they had to be in the lobby at 4 am packed and ready to go. The second group to arrive in Hyderabad was a mix of students from Myanmar and Singapore.


After the group settled into their rooms, we visited the Infosys headquarters in Hyderabad.  Infosys started in 1981 with seven people and a grand total of $250. Today, it is a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services. Their revenues exceed 7 billion dollars and work for 22 of the fortune 500 companies.
Our talk today us that one of the biggest problems with growing a company that fast is managing employees, both in terms of keeping them busy and happy.

As of Sep 30th 2012, Infosys and its subsidiaries had 1,53,761 employees. When a departments or an individual employee achieves their goals they can become obsolete. To prevent this from happening Infosys has resource management group dedicated to reallocating under-utilised associates. They manage and develop a centralised database of employee skills and projects so that different departments can reallocate obsolete staff when they need their skills.

When employees have been listed on the centralised system and a new department does not pick them up they automatically resume training and skill development. This keeps employees sharp and focused for when they need to return to work. Infosys has now started encouraging generalist training and multi-skill development so that employees can assume various roles in the organisation.

The second biggest challenge when growing a multi-billion dollar company from the ground up in less than a generation is to keep your work force happy.

The Human Resources department takes charge on staff satisfaction and employs a range of processes and policies to keep spirits alive.

One of the most effective policies that the Hyderabad office has recently employed is implementing an instant reward system so that managers and employees can reward each other for good behaviour. This way each employee has the power to instantly reward good behaviour with points. These points can then be exchanged for merchandise and online products.

Another policy to have an impressive impact in the Hyderabad office was to make the incentive for good performance transparent. The HR departments makes is clear to people that they are in a specific pay grade because they possess certain skills. They then show them which skills they need to acquire to jump to the next pay grade. Employee skills and their corresponding pay grades are transparent for everyone to see. This way when someone makes the jump from one grade to another it encourages everyone to stay determined.
The next stop on today’s trip was the Indian School of Business. The Indian school of Business’ prime focus is to develop business solution for the ailments in our society.


It’s history dates back to 1990 when India was forced to liberalise its economy. Although the economy had a colossal workforce of over a billion citizens it needed educated CEOs, Vice presidents and Directors to lead India into the future. This need gave rise to the India School of Business.

In twelve short years the ISB has grown to become the youngest ranked school on the financial times’ Top 20 international business schools and it is the only south-Asian management school get accredited by the association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).Only 5% of the schools in the world get accredited by the AACSB.


The day ended with a short tour of the ISB campus just before it got dark and a long ride back to our hotel. The bus was filled with laughter and music blaring out of cell phones as the students settled into their new city.

If you would like to see more pictures from the day please log onto the ASEAN student exchange facebook page.

Links and resources:

by H