Great PR Move

There is a lot to learn from Infosys's way of handling taboo topics. These days, IT companies are giving pink slips and getting bad press about it. This is what Infy has done:

Rediff reported following:
India's second-largest information technology services provider, Infosys Technologies, has issued letters to its employees stating they could opt for a one-year sabbatical to engage themselves in philanthropic activities. They would continue to draw 50 per cent of their salary during the period. Infosys crossed the 100,000-employee mark in India in the quarter ended September 30, 2008

The company said that while the move may have coincided with the global financial turmoil and slowing growth rates of IT firms, it should be perceived as a pure voluntary act by employees who are prompted by altruistic motives and inspired by the example of its chairman and chief mentor, NR Narayana Murthy.

Why is this a good PR move

1. Instead of giving pink slip, Infy asks the employees to go and do some charity work, continues to pay 50%. If I am an employee, I would prefer 50% salary to getting fired. 
   
2. Infy gets some cost saving. It is not as great as other companies but still 50% of CTC is still good.
   
3. When these bad times are over (and they will one day), Infy has a better chance of getting these people back. None of the companies that are giving pink slips are going to get those people back.
   
4. On top of all this, Infosys gets a good press about how it is "giving back" to the society.
   

So in the end, Infosys saves some money, has a good chance of retaining "half pink slip" people, gets good press about social service and does not get bad press about firing people. What else can be called as a good move!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are my personal views. These are based on the information available in public domain. This is true of this entire blog but more true for this post. Some might see this blog post as a cynical view of a noble cause. But with all that is going on around, one learns not to be naive... 

Trouble @ Microsoft MSN/Windows Live?

I have been using MSN/Hotmail user for a long time. In fact, My Hotmail account signature carries an image, which identifies me as a beta tester for Windows Live Mail.

However lately, all is not well in the MSN. Very recently, Windows Live Mail underwent a major upgrade. It was meant to make it faster, better etc... However, what it did was to really mess up the UI. Rather than the nice and Jazzy UI, it looked amateurish.

To top this, I came across this web page http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/Home.aspx. I am using IE6 and it is looking horrible. I cannot imagine a Microsoft web page, not rendering correctly under IE6. Ugh... In addition, the page design is not at all professional (color scheme, header, images and text mixing into each other...)

For the curious few, here is the URL to the page: http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/Home.aspx Or just take a look at the screen shot below