Intense communication is key to employee focus: Vishal Sikka

Infosys is trying to build a context in a move to elevate the morale of its employees

Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka on Monday said that the company is engaging in “continuous communication” with its employees to encourage them to stay focused on the job.

While the company is facing questions over its corporate governance issues, the IT service industry, as a whole, has witnessed a shift in technology and service delivery mechanisms. Discussions across different platforms engaging with issues such as automation taking away jobs, cultural challenges in the company and governance issues may potentially impact the morale of the employees.

Sikka believes communication is not easy since some employees are often inside the clients’ campus and it is important to create a context that will motivate everyone across departments.

“Continuous and intense communication is very important across the organisation. In our case, it is not easy. (For) onsite employees, it is difficult to communicate as they are inside the clients’ campus. Talk is easy, you have to demonstrate by example in work, that you are focused you are ignoring the noise and the distraction and continuing to stay engaged,” said the Infosys chief executive while responding to investors in Mumbai.

The company is trying to build a context in a move to elevate the morale of its employees across different levels and it would help in the journey of transformation. “If you build the real context, it elevates everybody. It is exceedingly important and the drawback is it takes time,” added Sikka.

Ever since Sikka joined the company in August 2014, he brought in initiatives like the Zero Distance and Zero Bench to promote innovation across projects and employee levels. He also segregated people into teams to focus on industry-specific projects.

He said it is important to give leaders time to bring in transformation. “A lot of people may question the exercise of taking the leadership team through two years of a sample programme instead of just changing the leadership. If if you change the leadership team, what happens to the layers below. Then you create a complete disruption and you miss the point of the transformation,” said the Infosys CEO.