Infosys Human Resources head Krishnamurthy Shankar said the company "released" 8,000-9,000 employees in the past one year because of automation of lower-end jobs. Speaking on the sidelines of an event organised by the Global Shapers' Bengaluru chapter, Shankar said, "We have been releasing about 2,000 people every quarter and also training them in special courses that will help them in their new assignments." He added that with automation set to increase in intensity, the number of people it hires will come down over time.
Several IT mammoths are putting their money in automation of processes in their traditional businesses like BPO, application management, and infrastructure management. Wipro has an automation platform called Holmes. Its global HR head Saurabh Govil said around 3,200 people were released through automation to do more innovative work. The target is to take that figure to 4,500 this fiscal.
Infosys added 5,700 people in the first nine months of this fiscal, compared to about 17,000 in the same period last year. In the December quarter, Infosys' total employee strength actually declined - an extremely rare occurrence for India's No. 2 IT services company. The total strength fell by 66 to 1,99,763.
