Job Description In Infosys Technologies
Introduction
This is a study of employee motivation and job satisfaction in Infosys Technologies Ltd. India and attrition rate. In the forthcoming sections, I will walk you through the issues faced by Infosys employees regarding the company’s policy and work environment and factors leading to the de-motivation of employees and high attrition rate.
Job satisfaction comes with various factors like work environment, salary, designation, promotions, higher management, career opportunities and growth, other incentives etc. A dissatisfied employee will leave the organisation to show his dissatisfaction towards the company and hence increase the attrition rate. Based on different theories, we will suggest changes that can be made in these work place and give you an implementation plan to bring these changes into use. My goal will be to increase work motivation, among the employees, making Infosys Technologies Ltd. a more productive and better place to work.
Contents
Job Description in Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Infosys Technology Ltd., one of the largest IT companies in India with 114,822 employees worldwide< Infosys Technologies Limited (2010-06-30). “What We Do | About Us”. Infosys. Retrieved 2010-07-27 > and has offices in 33 countries and development centers in India, China, Australia, UK, Canada and Japan. It was founded on 2 July 1981 by seven entrepreneurs.
Infosys Technologies Ltd. offers IT and consulting solutions across various business units aligned with various industry verticals like banking, life sciences, and retail to name a few. The responsibilities of an Infosys employee include the following-
Understanding client requirements and preparing designs for translating those needs into deliverables
Building best-of-breed applications and software per-specification and on-time delivery of identified work-products
Ensuring compliance to corporate policies, processes and standards
Maintaining and enhancing applications and software per specific client-contractual norms
According to NASSCOM, the Indian IT industry is estimated to be around US $50 billion.< http://www.dnb.co.in/TopIT/overview.asp>. Pre recession, the IT professionals used to move from one firm to another with the average market salary hike in the range of 20-30%. Post recession, the trend is changing fast with professional finding IT industry no more a charming and stable industry and a big chunk of experienced professionals are moving from IT sector to other sectors like banking, manufacturing etc. <http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/Are-IT-jobs-losing-sparkle/articleshow/6443498.cms>
The IT firms are finding it harder to retain their employees and the attrition rate are higher in almost all the major IT companies in India.
The attrition rate in Infosys Technologies Ltd. is at its peak and has become a big cause of concern. The quarterly attrition rate peaked to 15.8% during June. This is the highest in the last two years. The attrition rate was 13.4% in March and the same was 11.1% during the same period last year. < http://www.financialexpress.com/news/attrition-in-infosys-peaks-to-twoyear-high-at-15.8/646035/1 >.
The job satisfaction and motivation is on all time low and Employees are quitting for many reasons:
Salary
Job security
No growth Opportunity/ lack of promotions
No Personal Life/odd hours
Company Policies (iRACE- Infosys Role and Career Enhancement)
Job content is boring and repetitive
No Feedback
Recession
Many people perceive Infosys Technologies as a company fit for fresh engineering graduates only and find their career stagnant in just two years of service with Infosys Technologies.
Analysis and Evaluation of Ways to Increase Work Motivation
Performance of an individual at work place depends on the individual’s ability and the motivation to do the job using all those abilities in best possible manner. Abilities can come by proper education, learning and practice but motivation is a more complex thing.
“Motivation is the process that accounts for an individual’s intensity, direction and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal” (Mitchell, 1997)
Motivation theories will be studied and applied to help change employee motivation.
Goal-Setting Theory
Goal setting theory of motivation links the motivation with task complexity. It states that setting clear, specific, intense and difficult goals lead to higher output and performance rather than general, vague and easy roles. Employees are more passionate about working on goals which are more challenging and come with high rewards. Furthermore, better ad timely feedback channels the employee output and results better performance. (Edwin Locke, 1960).
Equity Theory
The concept of this theory is that individual’s job satisfaction and motivation does not depend on self input-output ratio alone but it depends on comparing self ratios with others.( John Stacey Adams, 1963). It also states that motivation comes not just from salary and work environment but by comparing their inputs (knowledge, experience, effort, ability) to their outputs (income and recognition) of those of other people in the same or other firms (Robbins, et al., 2010). Correct implementation of this theory depends on managers who are expected to be consistent, unbiased and make decisions based on accurate information.
Job Design Theory
The main purpose of job design (or re-design) is to increase both employee motivation and productivity (Rush, 1971).
Elements in the job are organised to increase or decrease individual effort primarily by:
Rotation – Employees are shifted from one task to other usually at same level, where similar skill is required to gain better insight into operations and more knowledge of the whole setup.
Job Enlargement – It can be used to increase motivation by increasing number and variety of task along with actual change in job. It also includes reducing the amount of specialization required by the employee, as well as, extending the length of time of completion.
Job Enrichment – The degree to which employee control planning, execution and evaluation of performance. (Robbins et al, 2010). It allows employee to take some managerial level responsibility.
Job simplification- Redesign and restructure the job responsibilities to make them efficient and simple.
Job Characteristics Model (JCM)
Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics theory identifies five core dimensions that proposes high motivation is related to experiencing three psychological states(experienced meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of the actual results) whilst working. The five dimensions are:
Skill variety – If employees utilize variety of their skills and talent in varied activities, they will be more satisfied and motivated.
Task identity – The degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and definite piece of work rather than doing a small repetitive piece of work.
Autonomy – More the independence and discretion given to employees, more is their contribution.
Feedback – Connecting employees to their work by providing effective feedback for self control and improvement. It gives clearer information to employees about their performance in accordance with the task.
Task significance – Depends upon the degree to which employee feels his contribution for a bigger cause and beyond the self. (Hackman & Oldham, 1976).
Choice of Preferred Changes
Issue #1: Job is Repetitive and Boring
“The inherent nature of the job is such that it is monotonous and lacks challenge” (Mathew, 2010)
The job at Infosys Technologies is repetitive, boring and lacks creativity. Though the employee is trained in various technologies but once they are allocated to a project, the employees follow a set standard procedure. Moreover, there is very little scope of choosing their preferred area of work or technology. It is even more difficult to change a project or business domain and employee is forced to work on a single project for years. There is also no possibility for personal development. (DiTecco et al, 1992)
The motivation theories such as Goal Setting Theory and Job Characteristics Theory can be applied to solve this Issue. The managers along with employees should participate in setting challenging and new goals to increase the employee’s goal acceptance.
Choice of Preferred Changes and Roles
More challenging, difficult and clear goals should be set with high rewards to improve motivation. The Job Design Theory can be used to introduce job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment. Motivation can also be increased by introducing skill variety, task identity, autonomy, feedback and task significance using JCM.
Issue #2: Rewards Do Not Match Efforts
“All workers have been paid the same amount, even though they do not make the same accomplishment” (Naidu, 2010).
According to the Equity Theory, people are motivated by comparisons with others. A hard-worker who gets same the pay as the person who puts in half the effort as him, will be dissatisfied and this can decrease staff morale (Robbins, et. al., 2010).
Choice of Preferred Change
The organisation will ensure employee’s outputs match in accordance to their inputs.
Issue #3: Employees Do Not Receive Useful Feedback from their Managers
There is an inadequate feedback mechanism for employees; the managers suggest very general and vague description of work and performance. Employees are unable to know their shortcomings and ways to improve them. Self generated feedback is more powerful than externally generated feedback to motivate them. (Ivancevich and McMahon, 1982)
Both the JCM as well as the Goal setting theory suggests feedback as an important characteristic to improve motivation among employees. As stated in the above description of Goal Setting Theory, “Self generated feedback is more powerful than externally generated feedback to motivate them”.
Choice of Preferred Change
Timely constructive feedback to the employees not only gives them the opportunity to evaluate their performance but also provides them with guidelines to improve in the future.
Appraisals to be regularly carried out every 3 months by the manager.
Justification of Choices
Problems
Boring Job
Low Salary
Minimum Feedback
Theories
Goal Setting and Job Characteristic Model
Equity Model
Goal Setting and Job Characteristic Model
Recommended Changes
Set challenging and interesting goals. Implement job rotation, job enlargement and job enrichment
Pay salary based on the output and input
Evaluate goals, performance and achievements of each employee every 3 months by manager and themselves
Ability of employees to change
Medium
High
Medium
Ability of organisation to implement the change
Medium
Medium
High
Table A: Justification of Changes
In Table A, we highlighted the three main reasons for high attrition rate and low motivation among the employees of Infosys Technologies. We implemented three changes and the justified them, considering the questions: What is the ability of the employees to change? What is the possibility for the change to occur in the organisation?
Implementing goal setting model is easy as it does not require a lot of resources/investments. The employees along with managers need to arrange simple meeting and put some effort and thinking to set some creative and challenging goals. In the long term this practice can really lead to high returns and benefits to employees and organisation. As this model is quite cheap to implement, there is a high possibility that organisations will welcome these changes. However, there is a limitation to this model as employees are not qualified enough to do a very high variety of job and also scope of the job cannot be expanded much. So, employees can only add a limited amount of interesting content to the job.
The introduction of the new promotion and salary structure policy, iRACE in the recession period was a big reason for employee dissatisfaction and quitting the organization. Such problems can best be solved by adopting equity model. The employee could easily decide to increase efforts and outputs, if the employee’s inputs were to match with the outputs. The organisation can choose a higher salary or a more recognition and rewards or a combination of both higher salary and rewards to motivate the employees to increase their outputs. The possibility of an organisation being able to pay different employees a different pay is doable, but it might be very challenging to implement. The challenge is that, it could get expensive for the higher output employees and it could prove to decrease motivation for the employees with lower output. The adoption of other reward systems like praise and recognition is much simple to implement but the challenge with this is that it may not motivate the employees much to increase their outputs.
Manager-Employee meetings to discuss performances, goals and feedback could prove as an essential element in curbing attrition rate in the organization. Feedback meetings are inexpensive to conduct and it could prove highly beneficial for the organization in the long run. The challenge with the feedback meetings is to have timely arrangement and efforts from employee and managers to make it constructive.
Implementation Plan
In this section we will discuss the implementation plan for all the suggestions discussed above for Infosys Technologies.
Goal setting
Infosys Technologies Ltd. needs to set processes where managers regularly arrange meetings with the employee to discuss and set challenging rewarding goals. Proper mechanism should be put in place for the managers to track the employees’ progress towards goal in a transparent way.
Input and output
Infosys Technologies Ltd. needs to change its iRACE policy to create a variable pay system and promotion system based on performance evaluation, instead of job tenure. Instead of raising the hierarchical levels of promotions, Infosys needs to strictly match promotions and salaries with performances.
Feedback
Infosys needs to set up proper feedback system and match the performances with the appraisal system. It needs to setup quarterly feedback system instead of yearly. Manager needs to give constructive verbal feedback to the employee every week and to give written feedback to employee every month.
Step by step process for twelve weeks is shown below:
Step 1: Managers set up goals for each employee considering their objective in week 1.
Step 2: For week 2 to week 6, Managers track the work progress of each employee.
Step 3: In week 7, Managers give the feedback to each employee.
Step 4: In week 8 and week 9, the Managers evaluate the employees’ performance against the task given.
Step 5: Appraisals discussions are held by the manager and rewards decided accordingly in week 10 and week 11.
The above process should be repeated in every quarter.
Consequences of Changes Implemented
The following results may occur by following the above mentioned changes in the organisation:
More challenging goal setting will lead to intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction will be high in the organization. In turn, the employees’ will be more inclined to perform to their optimum potential to get high rewards and recognition and they will be more involved. From organizations perspective, the main problem of high attrition will be reduced as the overall image and job satisfaction in the company will increase.
By associating salaries of the employee with his input-output ratio, the employee will be more inclined to show his best and earn more income. Hence, by making changes in the iRACE policy of payscale, Infosys technology can increase the motivation and staff morale. However, Infosys technologies needs to get variety of projects and follow job rotation of employees on those various projects. Reallocating salary structure might affect the company’s share prices and profits.
The feedback and appraisal system needs to be confidential, uniform as well as transparent. The existing Feedback mechanism in Infosys technologies is not very strong and reliable. It needs to be made more transparent and changes needs to be made in the iRACE appraisal policy. Proper 360 degree feedback needs to be given to employee with thorough discussions and time to improve. This will allow the employees to improve and they will be more involved in the overall development of the quality of work. Thus, the output of the company will increase and the attrition rate will decrease.
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