Infosys Technologies, famous for its training campus in Mysore, is now adding another feature to its internal training and certification programmes. The company is introducing a B-school or management scheme for its employees, a step further to its leadership initiatives.

Employees with over 3 years experience or 60 per cent of the 1.14-lakh people strong organisation will be eligible for the scheme to be launched in next few months, according to company board member and HR head TV Mohandas Pai.

A pilot project involving 150 people has just been completed. “The idea of the business scheme is to raise the business acumen of our employees. It will bring value to the work we do for our clients,” Srikantan Moorthy, vice-president and head of education & research, Infosys Technologies said.

The company has collaborated with a few global B-schools including IIMs and internal practitioners to come up with the programme, Moorthy added, while declining to name the foreign management institutions. “Aspects from these will be melded and the programme, which will have business principles related to general management, strategy, HR and finance, be rolled out depending on the role and level of an employee,” he said. Moorthy said that the scheme will not be a one-time intervention, but ongoing with an employee’s worklife.

Meanwhile, the firm added 27,639 and 8,946 employees on gross and net basis respectively during the year. Gross addition of employees during the fourth quarter was 9,313 with net addition at 3,914. Attrition rate in the quarter increased to 13.4 per cent. The firm anticipates the attrition rate to go up in the current quarter and come down from second quarter of FY11.

Pai said that the firm plans to hire 30,000 people on gross basis for FY11. This will include 19,000 campus recruits, 6,000 laterals including over 2,000 in China, Philippines, Europe and US and rest for BPO. Infosys has given a 14-17 per cent hike in India and 2-3 per cent increase for those outside the country, totaling up to $134 million, the highest in Infosys’ history. About 7,500 promotions have been made.

On the controversial career architecture initiative iRace, the HR head said that there was some unhappiness created because 4,500 people were pitted in lower roles after mapping of structure. “There have been discussions and an employee engagement group is looking at the issue. If needed, we will make small changes to iRace,” Pai said. Of these 4,500 staff, 2,500 are among those being promoted with the rest expected to get higher roles in the October promotion cycle, he added.