Ensuring Employee Safety and Building Business Resilience in the time of COVID-19

Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic | FAQs

Message to our clients

by Salil Parekh

With the steps we are all taking to address the COVID-19 situation, I wanted to share our approach with you.

Like you, we too are focusing on the safety of our employees worldwide, the communities we live and work in, and ensuring we diligently meet all our service commitments.

We have specific business continuity plans in place and are taking steps to ensure that we maintain operational readiness, even as we continue to be guided by advisories from local governments in the 46 countries we operate in. Our team is monitoring the evolving situation 24x7, and I am briefed daily of the developments and responses.

As we deal with the situation, we are extending support to our communities. To this end, Infosys Foundation in the US will open up their learning platform for teachers, so they can continue to school their students from home. In India, Infosys Foundation has offered to partner with the government to help set up a medical facility to address the healthcare needs of citizens affected by coronavirus.

The coming days and weeks will test all of us, I am sure. If I can be of any help, please do not hesitate to reach me.

Please take care and stay safe.

Sincerely,

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Being Resilient. That’s Live Enterprise.

Enterprise resilience is being tested. In response, companies are looking to accelerate their capabilities to make intuitive decisions, build responsive value chains, nurture creative talent and deliver perceptive experiences. This means truly strengthening their digital muscle. In the past few weeks, we have been called to serve the critical business needs of several clients from your industry. Having found the ways and means to facilitate essential digital services at scale, for them, we are happy to share the learning with you.

Everything you wanted to know about how we are making every effort to manage the situation

1. How is Infosys responding to the COVID-19 global pandemic?

Infosys has well-defined disaster recovery and business continuity plans at various levels. We also have a comprehensive pandemics response plan, which is based on WHO and local government recommendations. In the light of the rapid spread of coronavirus, we are constantly monitoring the situation, following applicable government directives and ensuring regular communication with our employees across the world. We have put in place several measures -- including increased precautions at our facilities, travel advisories, remote working where feasible, and a dedicated helpdesk to ensure employee safety and business continuity.

2. What is Infosys’ business continuity plan?

Our disaster recovery and business continuity plans function at the corporate, functional, location and account levels. Infosys also has a detailed pandemics response plan, which is based on WHO recommendations. These plans have been previously tested and bettered over decades, and guide us as we deal with unusual situations, such as the one we are faced with currently. The pandemics response plan, along with the corporate disaster recovery and business continuity plans are now being executed across Infosys locations. These plans enable a diverse set of strategies like remote working, work transfer (to offshore/onshore), and relocation of critical projects and resources, as required.

3. Will client services be impacted due to COVID-19?

Infosys is taking multiple steps to ensure that, even as we deal with this unprecedented situation, we deliver on our key client deliverables, while following local government advisories and directives, and ensuring the safety of our employees and communities.

4. How is Infosys ensuring that critical services do not get impacted?

Infosys remains committed to meeting its client deliverable mandates and ensuring that our critical client services do not get impacted. We are working every day to ensure that there is no disruption to any of our clients’ critical operations and communicating regularly with clients in case we foresee any unavoidable disruptions.

5. How is Infosys keeping its employees safe?

Prioritizing the safety of our employees, Infosys has advised all its employees to work from home wherever possible, and we are taking all reasonable steps to ensure continued service delivery to our clients. We are also following local government directives with regard to our workplaces in all the countries we operate in. Where work from home is not possible, we are taking extensive measures to ensure the safety of our employees. These include increased sanitization of all our office premises, removal of biometric scanners, installation of thermal scanners, daily communication updates, restricted movements in common areas, closure of recreational facilities and avoiding large gatherings. We have also set up a dedicated helpline for our employees, and ensured that medical centers are available in every campus, with access to an ambulance.

6. Has Infosys issued any travel advisories for employees and other stakeholders?

Infosys continues to follow the travel advisories of governments globally. We have restricted all non-essential travel, domestic as well as international, to reduce the risk. We have also sent travel advisories to all employees to ensure their travel is as per the guidelines of the local government. All employees who have travelled to any international destinations or have come in contact with anyone who has, have been asked to self-declare it to the company and follow the necessary quarantine protocols mandated by the local government authorities.

7. Are all Infosys offices across the world working as normal?

Infosys offices across the world are following the local government directives, and based on the advisories determining if offices can be operational. Where ever possible we are also encouraging our employees to work from home to maintain social distancing.

8. Has Infosys enabled work from home for all employees?

Prioritizing the safety of our employees, Infosys has advised all its employees to work from home wherever possible, and we are taking all reasonable steps to ensure continued service delivery to our clients. We are also following local government directives with regard to our workplaces in all the countries we operate in.

9. What about employees who cannot work from home?

Our clients across the world have entrusted us with running some critical services for them. While we are working with our clients to enable work from home for our employees to the extent possible, in cases where employees have to come to our workplaces in order for these critical services to run uninterrupted, we have ensured multiple, round-the-clock initiatives to ensure our workplaces are safe, hygienic and follow social distancing best-practices.

10. What are the measures Infosys is taking to sanitize its workplaces?

Our offices globally, including those in shared facilities, are being reviewed regularly with the local building management and local authorities with regard to managing hygiene as well as risks due to suspect cases. This includes increased and regular sanitization, frequent fumigation, placement of sanitizers and masks, as well as availability of medical centers and staff - https://infy.com/2zbM4if

11. When an employee tests positive for COVID-19, how does Infosys respond?

As we have said before, the safety and well-being of our employees is our first and foremost priority. We are taking a multi-pronged approach to deal with any employee who has tested positive or shows symptoms of the illness.

For the affected employee, we make sure we provide uninterrupted support and continuous monitoring of the employee’s health situation. We also ensure that we track all their movements and follow contact tracing. All those who have come in contact, both directly and indirectly, are required to self-quarantine for a mandatory 14-day period.

From a location perspective, we vacate the premises immediately and shut our workplace for sanitization and decontamination. We follow a similar procedure for common areas (washrooms, food courts etc.) that the employee may have accessed.

We also take care to communicate responsibly to all stakeholders – the local governments and health authorities, colleagues, our clients, Infosys leadership and employees, the media and other relevant parties.

We will take all reasonable steps to mitigate the further spreading of the virus, keeping in mind our commitment to our employees and clients.

12. How many Infoscions have tested positive for COVID-19?

The dynamics of this situation are evolving continuously. We will not report the number of affected employees to avoid inaccuracies.

13. With lockdowns imposed across India, how is Infosys ensuring business continuity?

In India, due to a complete lockdown in several states in the country, we have invoked our business continuity plans across our development centers. A significant majority of our employees have been enabled to work from home and we have advised them to continue working remotely. Wherever employees are servicing critical processes, we are following government advisories and working with the local authorities for safe transportation and accommodation arrangements of these key personnel. We are following local government directives with regard to our workplaces in all the countries we operate in.

14. How can I get regular updates on COVID-19 from Infosys?

You can get in touch with our global PR team ( PR_Global@infosys.com) in order to get updates on this situation.