Orchestrating the skill revolution – One person at a time

For the past 16 years, my every day has been filled with purpose, working for an organization that values its employees as its most important asset. Over that period, people have joined, stayed, built their careers (and some great solutions for our clients), and grown the Infosys family. Our focus has remained on instilling a deep purpose into work so that our people find and then build what's next while progressing their careers dynamically. We strive to provide everyone with an inclusive culture and environment where we navigate further together, giving our best and achieving our true potential.

As an HR professional, the ultimate reward is to watch this magic unfold with every employee, but sometimes getting external recognition lets us know that we are on the right path. Recent accolades from the Top Employers Institute and Brandon Hall Group further affirm our long-held belief that we are not a technology company full of people, but a people company full of technology. Receiving recognition by the global authority on recognizing excellence in people practices from among 1,660 organizations across the world, or winning awards for the innovative application of technology in human capital management, while not surprising, is also humbling is many ways.

As part of our Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) vision, we have begun incorporating 'employee experience' as key design criteria in our people-related practices and processes. From including employee experience as part of our employer brand promise to changing how we create and review our processes and systems, everything is done in keeping with evolving employee expectations. As a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, building what's next doesn't just apply to our clients, it begins at home.

One of the products we were awarded for was built around leveraging our employees' social connections. Technology's unparalleled ability to rapidly sift through millions of data points enables employees to quickly identify high-potential candidates from their social networks. The new platform, built in collaboration with Reppify, empowers employees to refer prospects in a friction-free process. It also reduces conscious and unconscious bias in the hiring process by recommending the best matches based on the profile and not personal parameters.

In consulting companies such as Infosys, the establishment of new business partnerships is based on acquiring a client's employees. A recent internal client transition project called for the rollout of 1,220 job offers in 24 hours, a task considered impossible with traditional manual methods but we took on as a challenge. Enter robotic process automation and the Rebadge offer bot. Built to expedite the creation of candidate offer packets, customized for individual candidates based on their job roles and bonus eligibility, it helped save about 20,000-man-hours of effort with high accuracy levels. Rebadge empowered Infosys to set benchmarks and satisfy client demands by releasing all 1,220 offers within 40 minutes of the deal announcement, with a 98% offer acceptance rate.

While the first two innovations were about experienced professionals, the next one is about preparing freshers for employability. Over 1.5 million engineering students graduate each year in India, yet 80% of them don’t have the skills readily applicable in the workplace. Seeing this opportunity to close the skills gap with this talent pool, Infosys developed InfyTQ, a one-of-its-kind, next-generation learning and engagement platform that offers a combination of technical and behavioral skills courses for students to upskill – for free! Currently, InfyTQ has 800,000+ users registered on the platform, with an average of 135,000+ accessing the technical Foundation Courses. The platform also offers an opportunity to take the Infosys Certification. Students who score 65% and above in the Infosys Certification get certified as a software programmer and receive an on-the-spot job interview opportunity for entry-level technical roles.

We will continue to turn to technology for enhancing the employee experience, which has become all the more relevant in the pandemic era of remote work. Technological tools, including artificial intelligence, will become an integral part of the repertoire that our and other talent acquisition teams will leverage in this new age. 

Sourcing and nurturing talent from alternate pools, an increased focus on employee referrals, especially for gig workers, and for talent branding, is how we see this trend converging. Flexible work schedules, standardizing assessment, and evaluation by removing conscious and unconscious biases is another area in which technology will play a role.

A move away from degrees to industry-relevant skills in a more inclusive world of exciting talent, is the other trend we will embrace going forward. If anything, the pandemic just thrust us forward into a future that will reward the innovative.