Global software major Infosys has enabled 93 per cent of its employees to work from home across various geographies amid Covid lockdown, its CEO has said. “We today have 93 per cent of our employees working remotely,” said Chief Executive Salil Parekh at the Q4 and fiscal 2019-20 financial results.
Ninety three per cent of the workforce translates to 2.26 lakh techies connecting from home in 46 countries or more. Stricken by Covid, Parekh said the company has activated business continuity plans in the last two to three weeks.
“We anticipate that there will be challenges in the business environment across a wide set of industries,” he said.
Chief Operating Officer U.B. Pravin Rao said the proportion of IT employees working from home is slightly larger than those from the business process management business verticals. Rao said the company enabled 93 per cent employees to work from home in three weeks” time.
“People are now getting used to the new normal. It took a few days for them to get adjusted to this… our belief is once things come back, I don’t know if it will come back to the same normal, (or) it will be a new normal, there will always be some element of work from home,” he said.
To enable such large workforce to operate from home, Infosys had to upgrade its networks, provide internet dongles and other equipment to some employees for last mile connectivity.
Meanwhile, Infosys shied away from pronouncing the annual guidance.
“Given the uncertain environment, where the global pandemic and client business is marred by volatility, we don’t feel it will be appropriate for us to provide an annual guidance at this stage,” pointed out Parekh.
Infosys suspended guidance for revenue growth and operating margin for financial year 2020-21.
The IT major reported Rs 4,321 crore consolidated net profit for the fourth quarter (Q4) of fiscal 2019-20, registering 3.1 per cent sequential decline from Rs 4,457 crore a quarter ago.
