5 things to learn from Infosys’ Vishal Sikka on work culture

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5 things to learn from Infosys’ Vishal Sikka on work culture
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When a company is in transition phase, it needs a dynamic leader, someone like Infosys’ CEO Vishal Sikka, who knows exactly what changes he wants and how they can be achieved. Just a year old in the company, he has brought hope that India’s second largest software exporter could make a shift from a “has been” to a “relevant” player in the IT sector.

Sikka wants to make Infosys the IT bellwether again. He brought some changes to the rule book to enhance office work culture in order to make the company look like a new-age, youthful, agile firm, very different from the traditional Indian IT services firms. Here we list for you some of the significant changes he has introduced to the way Infosys will work hence forth:

1. Employees can junk formals: Do you like wearing ties. Of course No! Almost everyone hates wearing ties. Giving relief to his employees, the Infosys CEO told them that they could stop wearing ties. That means, they can wear jeans, t-shirts or anything they like. The idea is to make them comfortable in the office.

2. Extending maternity leave is now simpler: Attention ladies, if you are Infosys employees and want to extend your maternity leaves. Just drop a mail to your manager or boss, explaining the reasons. There is no need to give any embarrassing verbal explanations to your boss.

3. Lengthy processes get simplified: If you want to get transferred to a different location due to some personal reasons, you need not go through any complex procedure and give long explanations. The company has further institutionalized family events, including carnivals for employees' children.
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4. Improving employee engagement: Infosys has asked its employees to be part of the company’s decision-making process: It started motivating its employees to share their ideas. Sikka came up with Murmuration, aimed at crowd-sourcing ideas from employees. Over two weeks, 26,000 employees shared more than 2,500 ideas. Employees voted on the ideas that they felt were most relevant, and ten ideas were shortlisted for execution.

5. Bridging communication gaps: Sikka started a trend to interact frequently with his employees via blogs, town halls, InfyRadio, and InfyTV. He gives prompt replies to all the employees on Yammer, the enterprise communication platform.

The effects are now visible! The mood in Infosys' campus is very different from what Sikka inherited last year. Infosys' attrition has dropped to 14.2% (June quarter) from 23.4% in the same period last year.

Moreover, the company has revamped its traditional training programme and started rolling out a new learning framework for entry-level employees as part of Sikka's strategy to position the firm as different from its peers.

Infosys has also registered a 5% rise in its profit at Rs 3,030 crore for the first quarter of FY16 ended June 30, 2015. The software major retained its full fiscal year sales outlook on large outsourcing deal wins from overseas clients.
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(Image: Reuters)