BENGALURU: Infosys has relaunched its employee stock option plan (ESOP) for junior to middle-level management staff as it looks to rein in rising attrition that stood at 21% in the April-June 2016 quarter.

“Today, we relaunched our ESOP programme after a gap of 10-years plus, after about 13 years. We are rewarding about 7,500 of our employees from junior to middle level management with restricted stock options and we will extend it to middle management to senior leaders and title holders subsequently,” Infosys chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao said.

He added that the company continues to focus on reskilling employees and has also revamped its leadership development programmes.

ESOPs allow employees to own equity in the company, which is seen as a morale booster for them.

Infosys added 13,268 (gross) and 3,006 (net) people in the said quarter, taking its headcount to 1,97,050 at the end of June 2016.

Infosys has been witnessing a string of senior leaders quitting the firm. These exits include high-profile names like former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, head of manufacturing and EVP (executive vice-president) Sanjay Jalona, Infosys BPO head and EVP Gautam Thakkar, and Infosys EdgeVerve head and EVP Michael Reh.
The most recent exit was that of Samson David, Infosys’ head of cloud, infrastructure and security business.