Infosys’ new manpower utilization tactic could be the next IT game-changer!

Tech giant Infosys, in a bid to utilize its existing resources, has now developed a software application for its employees to apply for different projects that need workers based on their skills.

The move is part of the company’s efforts to keep a leaner and more disciplined bench under the initiative named ‘Zero Bench’ that will aim to work towards 100% utilization.

A 'bench' refers to employees who are on the rolls of an IT firm but are not billed for projects.

Officials aware of the development, on condition of anonymity, said, "The idea is to use existing resources better and eliminating the need to hire in thousands, like in the past. It is similar to the Uber concept — which is all about utilizing resources to the maximum and effectively.”

The initiative will make it India’s newest trend in the outsourcing market and also will help the firm keeping a check on attrition as employees will be given an opportunity to work on projects they want to.

This is an important metric as it gives customers an idea of companies that have a strong bench that can be quickly deployed for software maintenance and development projects, depending on demand. Utilization rates, as the term indicates, is the ratio of employees who have been deployed on software projects of customers, versus the number of employees who are currently on the bench. High utilization indicates lower bench strength.

Ravi Kumar S, the company's global head of delivery said, "Zero Bench is a next-generation people initiative that aims to maximize the potential of our talent who are currently trained and in between projects or on bench. We want to ensure that every individual is actively contributing towards organization goals by opening up opportunities for short-duration projects. We do this through a platform called 'Accelerate'.

This is a gamified platform for people to post modular work based on their project requirements. We have seen tremendous response since the launch, supplemented by continuous communication through our internal channels," Kumar further said.

For years — especially through the better part of the 2000s when demand for bread-and-butter outsourcing was sky high — India's top outsourcing firms worked towards keeping a strong bench, given the demand in the pipeline and how fast companies expected to ramp up projects.

Now, with the rapid advent of automation and growth rates having slowed down considerably, India's top software firms such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro are not hiring in droves like they used to in the heydays of the outsourcing industry and are instead working towards having leaner benches. To be sure, finding the perfect balance is nearly impossible, according to IT experts.

In an interview with The Economic Times earlier this month, Infosys's global head of talent Binod Hampapur Rangadore said that the zero bench programs would create opportunities for employees that did not exist in abundance in the past. "If there is a piece of work that needs to be done, we'll put it up on our core portal. People can look at it and choose to take it up or not. It does not restrict them," he had said.