Dear Infosys Board,
I am really confused on your company's stand when it comes to making people accountable. For the past few years Infosys has had a stand of perform or perish. They have fired senior leaders of Infosys just because they did not meet their revenue targets. Whatever the "not in their control" factors were it did not matter. It was a straight policy, either get done what you were accountable for or be asked the leave.
In the past couple of years there have been 2 major incidents in the Pune campus. The first of a woman being raped on campus, in 2015, the second the murder of a person in 2017. The former unfortunately made lesser news, probably because the victim was from the poorer section of the society. Nevertheless it was an unforgivable incident to happen. Despite the seriousness of these incidents, no person in the organisation has been held accountable for the following slips
1) A murder was discovered at 7:50 and the police was informed more than an hour later at 9:00.
2) A security person not allowed to enter a secure area got through
3) The deceased had made a complaint about harassment and yet the HR had not taken any action
4) The security firm's license has lapsed yet Infosys continued employing it.
5) The CCTV cameras were un-monitored
6) The manager called the security at 7:30 and yet needed to make a second call at 7:50 to make the security check for a person who could be in trouble. Why was the security not active to check for any potential danger to the person immediately?
7) No ambulance was called until more than an hour later. Not sure if the girl could have been revived by a reverberator had an ambulance come ?
8) A person being called at odd hours in an isolated location
It's not that people have not raised concerns about similar things in the past. I believe they have even written to the whistle blower team about similar things, yet no action was taken about this. Were they waiting for something serious to happen to take an appropriate action? Or is the whistle blower mail ID just a sham to meet the regulator's mandate?
If the policy is to hold people accountable to make money but not hold anyone accountable for the loss of lives or rape of people then it shows a very immoral mentality of the company.
To make matters worse the Infosys spokesperson in their politically correct way said no security system is “foolproof”. Indirectly absolving the firm of any accountability. The question then is that
1) No software developer makes code that is “foolproof”- Will you not hold developers accountable for quality work?
2) No managers can assure a "foolproof" revenue growth in this changing world- Will you not hold them accountable if they miss?
3) No CEO can assure a "foolproof" way of making to $20 billion revenue by 2020- Will you not hold your CEO accountable?
4) If the company cannot guarantee safety and wellbeing of its employees the what moral right do they have to even ask the employees to work a minute more than the minimum time?
5) If the company cannot offer safety and wellbeing of its employees in an outside town how can they force them to work in an unfamiliar town in locations far away from the main city?
6) If the company cannot
If you can hold employees, from developers to CEO's, responsible to meet quality and revenue targets, why is no employee being held accountable for the lapse? The easiest thing to do is blame the security agency and fire them. That's the best way to absolve Infosys of any accountability. In case the police even tries to get Infosys involved you will through your high connections and expensive lawyers get away with it, as you have numerous other times.
The company will continue claiming they are "ethical" and they take such incidents "seriously" and their "focus" is on employee security but eventually revenue will rule over your morality.
1) Managers would be forced to reduce people in the team to do the same work, indirectly forcing the employees to work late hours.
2) Late night transportation would still be inadequate, forcing employees to either compromise their sleep by waiting for the company transport or take the risk of taking their own transport and get mugged/raped on the way.
3) Freshers would still be forced to go to your offices in isolated locations. The unfortunate souls would have no choice but to take this risk
4) Your transport department will continue getting kickbacks from the transport vendor to validate they are providing the best service although employees would be unhappy with the infrequent services.
5) Clients would continue being looted with billing for freshers who do not really work due to inadequate training and skills, but there just to show a person being billed. While the few smart people of the team would be stretching late to do work which these people do.
Every cog in the wheel of the organisation process is so mechanised that they do not know why they are doing what they are told to be done. The responses are mechanised and feelings totally missing. Similar incidents are bound to happen in the future if such mechanised behaviour continues.
Again the question to you is- What's the price the board is ready to pay to show better profitability. Is it 1 life, 1 rape, or it does not matter?
