Employee Motivation and Accountability: A Case Study of Infosys Limited

Introduction

Early in 2011, a team of employees at Infosys began working on a project that involved designing of an aircraft. The design work progressed well through the preliminary design stages. However, after some months, the team was informed that the timeline for the delivery of the product had been tightened. Since it was the first order the client had contracted with Infosys, the management was keen to make a good impression on its services. As a consequence, the team was instructed to work overtime to meet the new deadline. In response to this, the project team argued that it would be impractical to finish the project within the new timeline. However, the management convinced the team that the workload would come down over time. The heavy workload continued, resulting in disharmony and low team spirit.

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Background Information on Infosys

Infosys is one of the leading firms in IT services worldwide. Founded in 1981, in Pune, India, Infosys has experienced tremendous growth in the last 36 years, becoming one of the most sought-after organizations in the outsourcing services in the IT sector. As of 2014, the company had extended its presence to 32 countries spread across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It employs more than 160,000 workers in all of its domestic and international offices (Gupta & Dzharova, 2014). Being an IT company, it is expected that the workplace is a challenging environment considering that new technologies are developed every day. Like any IT solutions organizations, working with Infosys can be a stressful experience due to tight deadlines.

Employee Issues at Infosys

Inadequate human relations skills are an important issue that can be deduced from the case study. In the case scenario, it appears that some team members favor management's decision to revise the deadline backward. It is not necessarily that they agree with the decision; rather, these employees feel obligated to work under tight deadlines because doing so is in the best interest of the organization. It also appears that there is the other faction that feels that the deadline is impracticable, and therefore, their concerns need to be addressed. Amidst of all of this, it appears that there is lack of leadership at the team level. As a result, there is lack of a link between the team and the management hence the disharmony.

At the same time, the discomfort in the team has been aggravated by the nature of the hiring process. IT-related assignments, especially those related to the design of aircraft, require a lot of compactness among the employees to avoid any errors that may delay the whole process. It then becomes critical that these skills are extensively examined at the time of hiring employees. It is worthy conjecturing, therefore, that the disharmony in the team may have been as a result of the recruitment team's decision to focus more on the technical skills of the prospective employees and less on the human relations skills essential for a cohesiveness and effectiveness of organizational teams.

The top management appeared distant to the team and also seemed to have failed to acknowledge the legitimate concerns the team raised in regards to its inability to deliver as per the deadline. The failure to address the issue of the heavy workload appears to have put pressure on employees, causing work-related stress. In effect, the team members became frustrated hence the low spirit of the team and a decline in the overall team motivation.

Potential Ways of Resolving the Employee Issues in the Case Scenario of Infosys

The modern workplace has become complex yet often full of deadlines. According to Kotter (1990), management devises ways of coping with the complexity of the environment in which the business operates by giving clear directions to employees on processes and procedures for achieving specific organizational goals. That is to say, management ensures assignments are done to meet client expectations. On the other hand, leadership entails paying attention to employee traits which might affect their performance. It is about instilling motivation in employees to enable them to perform better in their respective areas of designation. This is what is missing in the case scenario. Therefore, upholding the principles of leadership can motivate the project team in the case study because leadership focuses more on the people than processes and procedures.

Leadership acknowledges that change is part and parcel of business management. Leaders engage employees in finding out business areas they may be experiencing challenges considering the complex nature of the modern business environment. Such leaders are transformational and often reach out to employees to address their concerns and inspire confidence in them while addressing their emotional needs at the workplace. When employees' work-related hindrances are addressed, they feel motivated and are more likely to record high levels of performance (Bass, 1990). Some employees may perform under intense pressure, but a majority succumbs to pressure due to high levels of stress, resulting in lower levels of performance (Bhui, Dinos, Stansfeld, & White, 2012). Addressing employee work-related issues in the case study could reduce stress and frustration. The low morale has been occasioned by stress. If the issue of deadline is addressed, the team would be motivated and perform better, and high quality is likely to be achieved in spite of the expected time overrun. For example, engaging the employees in ways of handling the increased workload can make the two parties reach a compromise and communicate the position to the client accordingly. This approach can reduce stress and also increase the spirit of the team. As Sutton (2010) puts it, a leader is expected to remove roadblocks that may hinder the quality performance of employees. In this case, the stress and low morale among the design staff represent barriers and, therefore, need to be removed.

Another potential remedy to the situation that has been highlighted in the case study is for the management to abandon transactional leadership. Unlike transformational leadership, transactional leadership pays more attention to processes and procedures. Transactional leaders exchange rewards for performance, promise better rewards for higher performance. Simply put, such leaders recognize accomplishments but give little attention to the process of attaining good performance. This is because this management philosophy suggests that good performance can only be achieved by giving prescriptions to employees on how to accomplish certain assignments and some of the prescriptions are adherence to deadlines and standards (Bass, 1990). Presently, the management in the case study holds the view that payment of overtime dues would result in higher motivation hence the deadline would be met as defined. On the contrary, this may not be the case because scholarly evidence suggests that the presence of factors such as stress make employees miserable and less productive (Sutton, 2007). Abandonment of this approach can ensure issues related to the employees vis-a-vis their work are addressed. If addressed comprehensively, this approach can enhance performance by reducing the level of frustration among the design project employees.

One aspect of failure on the management regarding employee hiring is the lack of staff with human relations skills. These skills are critical because they enable the group to function as a unit. As per the case scenario, employee disharmony has been highlighted, and perhaps the poor leadership of the team leader could be the reason for the inadequate link between the team members and the management. In this regard, it is critical that technical qualifications are considered alongside human relation skills when hiring employees. Human skills create an atmosphere where employees work with each other for a common goal. A team leader with human skills responds to needs of the subordinates (Ghalandari, 2012). Since the possession of such skills is key to the success of teams, it is critical that the human resource department of Infosys pays more attention to the right mix of technical skills and human relations skills when acquiring new recruits (Ghiselli, 1966).

Making employees accountable can further help in addressing issues in the case study. To achieve this, it is critical to define clear goals of a team at the onset of projects. A clear definition of objectives avoids situations where measurement of success is being adjusted in a manner that hurts workers' morale (Bregman, 2016). As such, clarity can reduce disagreements in teams. Accordingly, clear goals from the start of the project in the case study could foster ownership of the project. When people own a project, they become more innovative in dealing with changes in their work schedules and also show a willingness to take responsibility for their actions.

References

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19-31. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(90)90061-s

Bhui, K. S., Dinos, S., Stansfeld, S. A., & White, P. D. (2012). A Synthesis of the evidence for managing stress at work: A review of the reviews reporting on anxiety, depression, and absenteeism. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 2012(1), 1-21. doi:10.1155/2012/515874

Bregman, P. (2016). The right way to hold people accountable. Harvard Business Review.

Ghalandari, K. (2012). Investigation of the effect of management skills (technical,human and cognitive) on productivity of human resources in Iran. World Applied Sciences Journal, 20(3), 476-480. doi:10.5829/idosi.wasj.2012.20.03.2560

Ghiselli, E. E. (1966). The validity of a personnel interview. Personnel Psychology, 19(4), 389-394. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.1966.tb00313.x

Gupta, S., & Dzharova, H. (2014). Innovation and adaptation: Continuing the Infosys journey. IIMB Management Review, 26(4), 249-256. doi:10.1016/j.iimb.2014.08.001

Kotter, J. P. (1990). What leaders really do. Harvard Business Review, 1-11.

Sutton, R. (2007). Building the civilized workplace. McKinsey Quarterly, 2(2007), 47-55.

Sutton, R. I. (2010). Managing yourself: The boss as the human shield. Harvard Business Review, 1-7.