Infosys Employees to Undergo Certification for Promotion

In what will be the first such comprehensive exercise in the IT industry, all the 91,000-odd employees of India's second-largest IT services provider, Infosys Technologies, will now have to pass certification programmes to get promoted.

The certification programme, conducted every March, is now being extended across the board and will test the employees' domain expertise, and grade them accordingly to be eligible for promotion.

Nandita Gurjar, V-P and group head (HRD), Infosys, said: "We took a re-look at our performance structure, and decided that this year onwards, we will have various training certifications for our employees. Those who qualify for these certification benchmarks will be considered for higher and complex jobs."

The Bangalore-based IT firm also has a bottom performance plan, according to which the poor performers are given a chance to improve their skills. But if we see no improvement, despite all measures, we will let go of the employees, Said Gurjar.

She confirmed that some employees were asked to leave on these grounds, but declined to put a figure to it. Incidentally, this calendar year, there were reports of IBM laying off 500 to 600 freshers, and working on ways to certify the skill levels of its employees.

Besides, 500 people were asked to resign from India's largest IT services provider, TCS . Yahoo! India, too, reportedly told 45 full-time employees across all levels to quit on these grounds.