What Are the Reasons of Discontent Among Employees?

Q.1) What are the reasons of discontent among employees?

Initially, Infosys offered above average salaries and stock options to its employees. It also focused heavily on employee learning through training and enhancing the work environment by adding emotional value. However, it underwent some changes in order to accomplish its targeted growth and to accommodate the changing external environment that led to dissatisfaction amongst employees.

1. The stock options that employees received at 5% of market price earlier, were now issued at 85% of the market price because it was mandated by SEBI. The ESOP had enabled many employees coming from middle-class upbringings, reap unexpectedly high returns, so this change caused huge disappointment amongst employees.
2. With the company growing, Infosys became more and more process- oriented in the sense that the employees were mundane, repeatable projects. The lack of challenging and creative projects caused discontent amongst employees who were accustomed to tackling projects that needed ingenuity.
3. The apathy of top management and middle management towards employees frustrated of doing monotonous, uninteresting work aggravated employee dissatisfaction.
4.  These employees doing mundane projects were also not been richly rewarded.
5. The increasing disparity in employee hierarchy, made it difficult for managers to delegate the new responsibilities effectively. This also led to confusion and dissatisfaction amongst employees.
6. The period of downturn resulted in a paucity of projects which in turn led to many employees sitting idle, not being staffed in any project. This caused tremendous employee frustrations.
7. Majority of Infosys employees dreamt of working on-site with clients but in 2004 the US government cut down on the number of visas issued for business purposes making it difficult for Infosys to send employees on-site, and caused disappointment amongst employees.
8. In the financial year 2001-02, Infosys introduced variable pay for all employees based on company performance, unit's performance and the individual performance. Many employees were skeptical about company's intent behind this new policy.
9. Infosys turned into a role based organisation, with the intention of having better job evaluation. But the communication and execution of this change was not pulled off successfully by the management. There was misinformation creating confusion among employees and such rapid changes in policies also created a sense of uncertainty about their impact on employees, further leading to discontent and lack of trust between some employees.

In the process of expansion Infosys was losing its traditional culture of flexibility, collegiality and emotional connect with employees which was the prime cause of employee discontent.