With prospects of an early economic recovery receding, Infosys, India's second-largest IT services firm by revenues, seems to have decided to take a harder look at employee performance.

The firm is closely monitoring employee performance and around 2,200 employees, or twice the number last year, have been placed under the scanner for non-performance.

About 1,000 employees of the IT services staff or 1.5 per cent had figured among the bottom performers last year but this year about 3.5 per cent of the IT staff is in the bracket with 600 of them having left the company already. 

Such employees undergo mentoring and their performance is reviewed for a quarter under a performance improvement plan. 

Meanwhile, the company has said that it will honour the 20,000 job offers it has made to college students for 2009-10.

Wage increases could also become a causalty with lower increases or even a wage freeze at the company according to sources. In any case wage increases are likey to be subdued if there is any increase at all according to sources.

The firm had reported a net profit of Rs.16.41 billion for the third quarter of this fiscal, a 33 per cent year growth which was above expectations but significantly lower than the growth it had logged over the decade.

The company also expects a lower than the NASSCOM forecast of 16-17 per cent for the IT industry during the current fiscal due the depressed economic conditions. NASSCOM had earlier estimated software export revenues to touch 50 billion dollars, on a projected growth rate of 21-24 per cent.

According to analysts the customer IT spend has been decreasing and IT companies are feeling the pressure on their pricing.