Report on health, safety and environment

In managing Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) during the year, we focused our efforts on better design, smarter operations, reduction in wastage of resources and strengthening systems to reduce potential health and safety incidents.

OZONE

OZONE – Infosys’ Health, Safety and Environmental Management System (HSEMS) enunciates our philosophy and commitment towards environmental protection and management of health and safety of our employees, contractors and visitors. During March 2011, we were recertified compliant to ISO 140001: 2004 standard and OHSAS 18001: 2007 specifications at all our development centers in India. These certifications are a testament to our consistent pursuit of excellence in HSE management at Infosys.

Some of the most significant HSE initiatives undertaken during the year are listed below:

Awareness and employee engagement

We encourage our employees to get actively involved in initiatives that work towards the improvement of society and the environment around us. Several employee-driven eco groups have been instituted at our development centers and we encourage them to participate in campaigns that inculcate eco-friendly lifestyles. Some of the major environmental campaigns conducted successfully during 2010-11 by our eco groups are:

• The global work party on climate change conducted by 350.org which saw participation by thousands of employees
• The Earth hour week which culminated in ’Earth hour‘ observed globally by the WWF
• The deployment of an interactive sustainability portal. This was developed by the Hyderabad Eco Club and helps in tracking the carbon footprint of the campus

Energy

Opportunities for energy conservation were identified in all our operations, for both the physical and IT infrastructure. Some of the significant initiatives that have been taken up during the year are listed here:

• Installation of wind turbines at our campuses in Pune, Bangalore and Mangalore
• Installation of occupancy sensors in conference rooms and rest rooms
• Introduction of LED lamps in lieu of fluorescent tubes
• Installed Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) in condenser pumps on chillers
• Initiative to replace old and inefficient utilities such as DG sets, pumps and motors
• Setting up of a strong monitoring system for the Environmental Management System as per ISO 14001 guidelines

These measures have resulted in a reduction of the per capita power consumption by over 3.85% during the year.

Infrastructure development

Our persistent efforts to build the most sustainable infrastructure were acknowledged last year with two of our buildings, one each in Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram campuses, being awarded the LEED Platinum rating, the highest standard for Green Buildings by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). Continuing this commitment, all our new buildings that are under construction have been registered for LEED rating from the IGBC and are designed with a high performance envelope. This reduces the solar heat gain, while providing natural light. The energy performance of all the buildings designed in the previous year has been found to be more efficient than the globally accepted ASHRAE efficiency standards.

The following are some of the measures implemented during the year:

• A new building at our Hyderabad campus has been commissioned with radiant cooling, a method of cooling used for the first time in a commercial building in India.
• A chilled water storage tank of 300 KL capacity has been built in our Mangalore campus to increase the efficiency of the air-conditioning system. This system is under testing and is expected to reduce peak load as well as energy consumption. Initial results of this system have been very encouraging.
• Chilled beam systems, which are expected to be more efficient than the conventional air-conditioning systems are being implemented in three new buildings in our Pune campus.
• High efficiency chillers which consume considerably lesser power have been selected for all new upcoming projects, thus reducing peak demand as well as energy consumption.

IT infrastructure

As part of our efforts towards reducing power consumption and increasing operational efficiency, the following are some of the significant efforts pursued during the year:

• The optimized desktop power management configuration has been extended to around 80,000 desktops. An in-house application, ‘Terminator’, was designed to force-schedule the shutdown of desktops. This is being enhanced to achieve further reduction in power demand by desktops. In addition to this, around 10,000 older desktops have been replaced this year with newer power efficient models.
• We have continued our efforts towards restructuring the existing data centers and server rooms. Around twelve server rooms have been revamped this year and about 4,400 sq. ft. of server room / lab space has been released. Further, adoption of internal enterprise cloud, a shared, secure and virtualized computing environment with an easy-to-use ‘self-service’ portal, by projects has been swift. On an average 90% of the virtual instances are in use at any given time and we are planning to augment the capacity shortly.
• Video Conference (VC) usage has increased steadily this year and currently on an average around 2,500 VC calls are scheduled per month. Further, we have introduced Telepresence, an ultra high definition (1080p) capability VC facility, in three locations. Telepresence relays true life-size images and employs spatial audio to provide an immersive experience to the participants. Usage of this facility would help us connect with customers at CXO levels using VC and reduce travel requirements.

Green power

• During the year we worked with electricity and power regulators in Karnataka and at the Centre for making green power cheaper, an achievement that is significant not only for Infosys but would also benefit the community at large. A similar initiative is being taken up in other parts of the country. Infosys purchased about 14.52 million units of green power during the previous year and this figure is expected to increase substantially in the coming years.
• On renewable energy, a solar photo voltaic system of about 200 KW and 125 KW are being installed at the Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram campuses respectively. These together are expected to generate about 4,50,000 units of electricity annually, thus reducing the burden on the grid.

Water

Recognizing the immense importance of water as a natural resource, we have successfully achieved our target of reducing our employee ‘per capita’ fresh water consumption in our Indian campuses by 6.80% during 2010-11 through various water conservation initiatives. As part of our corporate goal to become a water-neutral organization, we have built rainwater harvesting reservoirs in our Mysore, Hyderabad, Pune and Mangalore campuses with a combined water holding capacity of over 300 million liters. We have also built state-of-the art waste water treatment plants to recycle and reuse the waste water generated in our campuses for flushing, landscaping and air-conditioning requirements.

Carbon emissions

Our goal is to become carbon-neutral. Several energy reduction programs have been initiated, such as campaigns promoting the use of mass transport and car-pooling among employees. We encourage our employees to use teleconferencing and video conferencing facility to avoid long-distance travel, thus minimizing the impact on the environment.

Chemical substances

In order to minimize the harmful environmental impact of chemicals used in our facilities primarily for housekeeping, landscaping and pest control, we have standardized the chemicals used across our Indian campuses. This has resulted in a 75% reduction in the number of chemicals being used. We have introduced green seal products for housekeeping and are working on finding eco-friendly alternatives in other areas.

Waste management

We have embarked on recycling all organic waste generated at our campuses with the establishment of a biogas plant in our Mysore campus. A second plant is under construction in our Pune campus. The biogas generated will be used as cooking fuel in the food courts and the final treated waste will be used as manure in our gardens. Effective waste management has been achieved by ensuring environment friendly methods of disposal and / or disposal as per regulations.

Biodiversity

We planted about 40,000 trees during 2010-11, taking the total number of trees in our Indian locations to more than 1,80,000. We are trying to ensure that most of the trees are native to the geographical locations of our campuses, which helps to promote local biodiversity and contributes to water conservation. Our sustainable practices have made our Mysore campus home to more than 52 species of birds including many endangered ones.

Health and safety

Safety

Safety is every employee’s responsibility and concern. Employees are expected to report incidents or workplace hazards. An Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) Committee is set up in each development center. This committee is made up of OH&S representatives who represent employees of a designated work group and its role is to take a proactive approach in assisting the employer to develop and implement the best possible OH&S policies, plans and procedures for eliminating or minimizing the occupational risks that are inherent in the business. Hazard and risk identification exercises are carried out and programs / measures for the reduction or mitigation of the same are ensured.

Health Assessment and Lifestyle Enrichment (HALE)

HALE is a best in class initiative aimed at improving organizational productivity through employee health and wellbeing. Starting as a response to increasing instances of lifestyle ailments like heart disease and stress, HALE has expanded its programs that span across several Development Centers. During the year, the HALE team held several health interventions, leisure interventions and innumerable awareness and information campaigns such as the Health Week, Safety Week, Health Matters – Arrest Hypertension, specials on our corporate television channel, InfyTV, online interventions, quizzes, puzzles, chat sessions with doctors and specialists, information mailers and sharing of health tips.

While Infosys continues on its journey to becoming a world-class employer, the HALE team is striving to ensure that it does so with employees who are healthy, able to balance work and life effectively.

Online health and wellness support

We have a tie-up with ChiHealth, a Health and wellness information portal, which offers online Integrated Wellness Services. Our employees can access this platform from the HALE portal. The ChiHealth is a one-stop solution that offers holistic preventive healthcare online services and addresses pertinent issues related to health and wellbeing. This portal has a wealth of information on wellness, preventive health, nutrition, diet, fitness, diseases and disorders. Employees visiting the portal are provided information on health and wellness by a team of experts in the respective areas.

Assessments and reviews

Periodic reviews and audits of the HSEMS are conducted for evaluating the HSE performance and the suitability and effectiveness of processes and programs in achieving the objectives and targets set for the year.

PHOENIX – The Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) at Infosys

During the year, all development centers in India were certified compliant to the BS25999 standard. Our Business Continuity program Management System (BCMS) comprises three phases:

• Emergency Response Phase : This is an incident management phase which refers to the initial reaction to an incident, focused on protecting life and organizational assets.
• Business Continuity Phase : This phase refers to the resumption of the most time-sensitive or critical business operations following an incident.
• Disaster Recovery Phase : This phase refers to bringing back business operations to a normal / sustainable level, following an incident.

Mock drills and exercises are carried out as per schedules and the learning from exercises, incidents and threats are analyzed and appropriate preventive and corrective actions are undertaken.

For additional details on our sustainability initiatives, refer to the Sustainability Report available on our website, www.infosys.com.