Infosys rolls out salary revision letters with lower 5-8% average hikes

IT services firm Infosys on Tuesday sent salary revision letters to employees, with a raise of between 5% and 8% to most of them depending on their performance rating, according to people briefed on the matter.Solid and exceptional performers, who are in a smaller number, though got a double-digit increase, the people said.

The company increased the salaries under the broad classifications of “met expectations”, “commendable performance” and “outstanding performance”.

The employees assessed at “met expectations” got a 5-7% increase, while “commendable” performers received a 7-10% hike. “Outstanding” performers, who formed a very small number, were given increments of 10-20%. Those under the “needs improvement” category did not get any raise, sections of employees told ET.

The salary hikes covered employees at both Job Level 5 (those up to team leaders) and Job Level 6 (managers below vice presidents). While employees at JL5 got the pay revision with retrospective effect from January 1, those at JL6 will get it effective April 1, they added.

Infosys did not respond to queries seeking details.

The pay hikes were 5-10% lower across the bands compared with the last pay revision of November 2023, they said. The performance bonus (variable pay) pay-out the company announced last week too had seen a similar drop.

The Bengaluru-headquartered software giant has about 323,000 employees on its roster. The hike relates to the appraisal period from September 2023 to October 2024 for which eligible employees received their rating letters in December.

Employees were probably expecting more. One of them told ET: “On a day such as this, our MS Teams communicator groups are usually buzzing with chats. The groups have gone quiet this time as they probably expected a bigger hike. We are, of course, also aware the industry is passing through a challenging face.”

Infosys last increased salaries with effect November 1, 2023. The company had frozen salary hikes in FY2022 to conserve cash and resumed its annual appraisal cycle starting October 2023.

Chief financial officer Jayesh Sanghrajka said last month that Infosys was considering a salary hike of 6-8% in India. “Of course, the higher performers would get much higher, etc., and the overseas would be low single digit,” he later told analysts.

For the October-December quarter, Infosys posted better-than-expected results with an 11.4% increase in net profit to $800 million and a 7.6% rise in revenue to $4.9 billion from a year earlier.

Infosys had said its programme to hire 15,000 freshers for the fiscal year 2024-25 was on track and that it planned to hire 20,000 freshers next fiscal year.