“New Delhi: On the face of a high attrition rate in the IT sector, Infosys has raised the exit barrier for its staff, making it mandatory for them to sign a non-compete agreement letter alongside this year’s annual hike letters.
The new clause has been added to the employment terms as a part of the company’s strategy to retain employees and control attrition, media reports said on Wednesday.
What this means is that the employees will now need to give an undertaking that they will not join any of its competitors for a period of six months after their job termination at Infosys.
According to the reports, the non-compete agreement specifies Infosys’ competitors as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Accenture, IBM Global Services, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Wipro.
The agreement letter also mentions that the employees cannot accept job offers even from its clients (which they have serviced in the last 12 months) for a period of six months.
The clause will make it difficult, if not impossible, for employees to find employment with its customers and some of its competition.
Infosys head (HR), Bikramjit Maitra, confirmed the move to The Economic Times, saying the reason behind including only a few firms in the “named competition” was to keep the terms reasonable and not restrict employment opportunities available to individuals.
Asking employees to sign non-compete clause isn’t that unusual. Almost all major IT firms like Accenture, Wipro supposedly do it. In fact, the newspaper quoted a senior Infosys executive as saying that his company may be one of the last few to initiate this on a formal basis.”
For details visit http://www.ibnlive.com/news/business/06_2007/infosys-raises-exit-barrier-for-staff-42317.html
I don’t understand that how can these people make an agreement by their own. Anyone can question that in court. Are these HR people doing know the labor rules in India?
U can not make people to stay in a company forcefully. At one side you want to pull others workforce by giving them lucrative packages and at other end wants your employee to stay.
I have seen in most of the company that your hike will be very nominal so if u want to increase your package, you need to jump. If these firms really wants to keep their employee the need to understand that
when they hire a employee from outside, people who are in the company with same exp and calibre should not feel that this guy got more money. Give them a nice hike every year.
Even its very hard in this competitive world but remember on thing programmer are key to sucess these companies not these middle layer manager who just make, graphs and charts to deliver things.
Programmers needs to treat well. I have seen in y job that senior manager will go onsite for long and so many good programmers would lose the opportunity. And every one knows managers never do coding….. 
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There are so many things also which Infosys applied in its starting days. People are not only workers there, they have a share of Infosys profit, and these kinds of policies are key factor in initial days of Infy. People were so loyal….They need to think
I guess, it’s a free market here. So, If infy would pressurize workers more, they can always leave infy. It’s not as if there is no escape as in case of bonded slaves in Africa.
If companies have too tight regulations, the best talent will not join these firms. On the other hand, companies which have open rules will get the better talent.
Since infosys and their likes are concentrating at the bottom end of talent market so as to increase their bottom lines in the short term, they are resorting to such tactics.
However, If the employees feel such contracts are illegal, they can always go to courts.
Ultimately, the employees who are working in infy want their salary more than the hard-work that they are putting in. Similarly, Infy wants the coding and productivity(even if it is low) more than the salary it pays. It’s a fair transaction. Since it is a competitive market with other firms not following the arm-twisting tactics like infy, They’ll have an edge w.r.t. Infosys in the job-market which will show few years down the line.
What do you say?