Wisdom of Crowds @ Infosys - Talent Strategy 2015, Bubble & Radio Case Study

With an idea to revamp its decade old hierarchical system, Infosys started an initiative called ‘Talent Strategy 2015’ in September 2010, which conducted a three-month survey among its employees with a focus to create a talent related strategy for the organization. Along with survey employees voiced their opinion and suggestions via internal blogs, essays etc. ‘Talent Strategy 2015’ is a part of company’s five-year plan to ideate talent management paradigms and practices required for Infosys of 2015. The inspiration came from James Surowiecki’s book Wisdom of Crowds and the idea is that decisions taken by groups are often better than those made by an individual. Infosys will apply this principle to improve revenue per employee, deal with the large number of global hires, decentralize and democratize ideas and inputs, to make internal processes more flexible for its young employees, and stem attrition.

Through the survey, employees were asked to define the policies and initiatives they wanted. A 100-member panel from different business verticals and geographies along with business heads will look for ways to implement the ideas that have been accepted and the panel included employees between ages of 21 to 53 years, with tenures of half-a-year to 15 years. Some of the initiatives that were started after the survey are a team was set up to design a tool that will measure an employee’s productivity when they are working with mobile phones, Blackberry and iPad, create an internal job market where an employee can see the roles available and the compensation being offered for such roles, employees wanted to know the exact billing amount their roles generated, and the company also tweaked the talent retention policy as per the survey feedback.

Two reasons that prompted Infosys to take this initiative was higher attrition levels in 2010, changing demographic of its employees as thousands of freshers straight away from campuses across the country are joining and the rise of social media and adoption of social tools by younger employees being very high and they wanted to use the social media in doing their jobs, collaborate and share knowledge and build relationships with clients and service them better. Advantage for Infosys is that implementing social media tools and employee engagement models will improve the employee satisfaction and clients can also benefit, with employees collaborating with them and provide better services quickly. Global peers IBM and Accenture have generated significant ROI through adoption social media and tools in their organization and encouraging employees to use such tools. 

Infosys launched Talent Strategy 2015 in February 2011 and announced that the goal of this program is revamping its decade old hierarchical system and making internal processes more flexible for young employees this year to stem attrition and attract talent. Infosys  expects to see good results of these measures within the next 18 months and the company wants to stem attrition of employees particularly with 3-8 years experience and attract more experienced and skilled professionals into the organization. Analysts and other experts were very skeptical about the Talent Strategy but Infosys believes that in this strategy and are actively implementing through initiatives like Infy Bubble, Radio etc.

Infosys Bubble was launched in June 2011, is a combination of Facebook-like social networking features such as sharing pictures and moods, combined with Twitter-like capabilities to “follow” others. Around 80,000 employees have already signed on to “connect” at professional (“need advice on Java tools”) and personal levels. The site allows employees to connect with colleagues across the globe and also allows employees to post personal comments on any individual or senior officials. The social platform has 2, 61,030 connections and has 74,376 profiles. Infosys is trying to tap the wisdom of 20,000 former employees through this platform and hopes to gain more perspective on organizational problems from seasoned hands. Infosys Bubble is based on corporate social-networking platform; iEngage developed by Infosys and is built on top of Jive Social Business Software. Infosys iEngage can be deployed through Infosys cloud or client cloud in the SaaS model.

Infosys has launched its own radio station Infy Radio, which enables the staff to listen, request and dedicate favorite tunes. The radio station operates from 11 am to 7 pm and to tune in, employees have to download an application on their iPod or other handheld devices and plug in their earphones to listen to their favorite tracks. The radio service will run five days a week and will be a combination of Hindi and English music, RJ talk, Infy-related communication, leadership interviews. The proposal was made by members of our Voice of Youth Team during a strategy meeting in 2009. It is launched as a pilot in Bangalore and will be taken to other campuses in India over the next three months.

Infosys has joined a string of companies seeking to make better use of employees' experience and knowledge and Infosys Bubble gives widely scattered employees a new way to collaborate and also encourages innovation. These social platforms contain similar features as public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and also overcome barriers to communication, such as location and position within the organization. Companies believe that employees are a competitive edge for the business and employee’s ability to make more decisions and take part in the organization strategy formulation will be added advantage for the organization to innovate and survive in the highly competitive world. Infosys is trying to use the social media to stem attrition, encourage employee participation and motivate them to strive even more for organizational growth and ultimately recruit the best talent. Infosys is seriously adopting the Wisdom of Crowds framework seriously.

Discussion points:

1. What will be the role of social media in employee’s engagement and how to profit from it?
2. Will the social media strategy and Wisdom of Crowds work for Infosys?
3. How internal social media can be used in customer relationship management and how to involve them?