Impact of Pandemic & H-1B Visa: IT Firms to Increase Onsite Operations! - How would it Make a Difference to Employees?

With COVID-19 pandemic affecting the economical crisis day by day, experts suggest that IT companies’ offshore-onshore ratio (the number of people working in India versus onsite) could increase, and onsite hiring may slow down. 

With Work From Home (WFH) model being implemented all over the world, experts hope that the above option could be achieved. Keeping in mind the visa denials, travel costs, the need to have local employees from the same culture and time zone can be given a thought.

Taking a look into the recent highlighted news Infosys to hire more in the US: The Bengaluru-based IT major recently announced that it will hire 12,000 people in the US over the next two years. This big news could be because of uncertainty over overseas travel, visas and improving margins. 

Last year, Salil Parekh, the company’s CEO, said in a press conference that the increase in subcontractor costs is affecting margins and increasing localisation would help bring it down. Following which according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, Infosys saw the highest denial rate for new H-1B petitions in the US (59 percent) between October 2019 and March 2020.

So since 2017, Infosys has been stepping up overseas hiring. The company currently has about 13,000 local hires in the US. Meanwhile, Pareekh Jain, founder, Pareekh Consulting, explained that most of these US hires are likely to be freshers, who are in the mid to senior job band.