After President Joe Biden’s inauguration, his administration quickly took actions that may delay some of his predecessor’s recent immigration changes from taking effect. This includes two January rule changes affecting wage costs and the relationship between H1B workers and secondary employers.
The administration issued a memorandum saying all agencies must consider a 60-day delay on all policies in the Federal Register that have yet to be implemented.
It also withdrew all policies that were submitted to the Federal Register but not yet published. The administration will review these policies for later approval.
This withdrawal includes a January 15, 2021 rule change under Donald Trump’s administration that required secondary employers to file Labor Condition Applications for H1B workers.
The change would have given end clients more responsibility when using the services of an H1B worker employed by another company.
As a result of this memorandum, the Department of Labor could issue a 60-day delay for the Department of Labor’s Interim Final Rule, which changes the prevailing wages for employees on H1B, H1B1, E3 nonimmigrant visas.
The rule would increase the wage costs for tech companies hiring nonimmigrant workers, possibly affecting the number of opportunities available for those workers.
The rule would not go into effect until March 21, 2020 if the Department of Labor implements the 60-day delay.
Infomatics employees are beginning the year 2021 with new insurance plans in their benefits package. Employees will find that these new plans from NationalGeneral provide significant savings for families compared to their previous benefits from Cigna.
“We have significantly reduced costs for family plans,” said Infomatics General Manager Muhammad Saleem, citing a 40 to 50 percent drop in premium prices. “There is no reduction in benefits, though there are savings in costs.”
As always, employees are supported by the dedicated benefits team at ADP.
For any benefits-related questions, employees can contact the Employee Advocacy Center at employeeadvocacycenter@adp.com or call (855) 322-1237.
Infomatics employees can also use the Allied online portal to manage their healthcare plans. Once employees receive their health insurance ID cards, they can visit www.alliedbenefit.com to create an account.
An online Allied account will allow employees to access their plan documents, check the status of their claims, view deductible and out-of-pocket status, compare providers and find in-network doctors and hospitals.
While employees have NationalGeneral insurance plans, Allied administers those plans for Infomatics employees.
The pandemic hit us all with unprecedented sanitization rules, nationwide lockdowns, curfews, school and college shut downs for indefinite periods, virtual classrooms and business meetings, restricted travel, work from home culture, the economic fallout of COVID and challenges faced by the governments attempting to tackle the situation.
Inspite of all the chaos, we managed to push ahead with some of our goals:
INFOMATICS INDIA – Cascades Data Solutions got itself registered as doing business as Infomatics India. The new name will be CASCADES DATA SOLUTIONS DBA INFOMATICS INDIA PRIVATE LTD for all regulatory purposes. We can now link ourselves on all social media to Infomatics Corp USA.
ISO 9001 CERTIFICATION – We got ourselves certified for both locations of Hyderabad and Mangalore. Luckily before the pandemic, in January a consultant from the certifying body had visited us and briefed us on the procedures and documentation needed for the process. The lockdown and consequent work-from-home period was utilized to focus on streamlining the processes needed for the certification. Thanks to Muhammed Saleem for driving the onshore and offshore teams for this accomplishment.
CREATION OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT TEAM –Meenaz Shariff, CEO of Infomatics India has taken the initiative of expanding the foray into Indian market. The first step was hiring of Business Development Manager, Neeha Alva. Neeha has been successful in getting our first client, IMPELYSIS, onboard!
VIRTUSA INDIA - We have pursued our strong ties with VIRTUSA USA to sign a "premier partner" recruitment agreement with Virtusa India. We have a dedicated team which will cater to the bulk requirements they release. Candidates will be assigned both contract and full time placements with Virtusa as needed.
MEA Region- We are also targeting the Middle East region and are in talks with prospective clients.
TECHNICAL & DEVELOPMENT TEAM
We acknowledge the extra efforts of our developers, Sandeep and team, who, except for the severe lockdown period, have operated out of Mangalore office, braving Covid challenges.
Our V-Form software product is almost near completion and testing is almost complete. Interns Thanush, Vinutha and Pooja are now permanent employees capable of taking up this difficult task.
RECRUTMENT TEAM – All recruiters, Sharad, Dilan and Bhargavi have motivated themselves despite falling business conditions to keep the tempo of recruitment going strongly.
MARKETING - Gopi, Ratnakar and Ajay from marketing have persevered and delivered.
FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION- On this, Vinod, Narayan & Apoorva took up additional responsibilities for timely execution of finance related tasks like payroll, timesheets and Invoicing coordination
CAMPUS RECRUITMENT DRIVES - This year, our campus recruitment drives were conducted through an online test, with only shortlisted candidates called for a in for an interview. We recruited at ST ALOYSIUS TECHNICAL COLLEGE and CANARA ENGINEERING COLLEGE, Mangalore. The selected interns will join in March 2021 as university exams are delayed this year.
We wish the Infomatics family a happy and prosperous 2021!
To Merlin Johnson, a career in quality assurance is all about the pursuit of perfection. In over four years as an Infomatics employee, she has made us proud by relentlessy seeking perfection in all the projects she's worked on for her assigned client.
"Whatever work you are doing, there should be some perfection included in it," Johnson said. "It’s not just for big work, even small work should have perfection."
Ultimately, her goal is to deliver software that is fully functional and free from any bugs.
Johnson began her career with Infomatics as a quality assurance analyst, serving her client on-site. Since then, she has advanced to a QA lead position for her excellence and now manages testing on multiple client projects.
Colleagues recognize Johnson for her strong leadership skills and promoting a balanced workload for her team. This is despite tight deadlines common with application development projects.
"I just make sure my team is going in the right direction," she said. "And, if my team needs any help in testing-related work, I'll pitch in myself to help get it done."
Johnson has found that the key to successful testing operations is for the QA team to pitch in during planning conversations. This is the only way to make sure the tester's experience can have a helpful impact in the final project requirements.
"We have to move forward and look at the requirements before finalizing for further development," she said.
Project teams will be able to plan a stable workload for QA teams and keep their efforts moving ahead smoothly, simply by joining the conversation.
Even with the best leadership and planning, deadlines are known to creep up. Johnson has found the key to getting past tight deadlines is to keep a calm head.
She emphasized that it's important to prioritize and test the most crucial aspects of an application first.
"If we test the core scenario, we can see if the application is working well or not," she said. "Do the sanity testing first then move on to secondary aspects of the application."
Since joining Infomatics Corp, Johnson has earned a promotion, multiple pay raises, and worked with the human resources department on compliance through multiple stages of her immigration journey.
"Infomatics has been very gracious," she said.
Johnson has a earned her bachelor's degree in information technology and has accumulated more than 4 years of experience in quality assurance.
We are proud to announce that Infomatics Corp has earned it's ISO 9001 certification. This initiative is part of our efforts to better serve our customers and engage with employees. Amidst difficulties of COVID-19 pandemic, Infomatics leadership prepared the proper documentation and obtained the certificate over a 4-month long period.
This certification applies for both our onshore and offshore branches.
As a result of the certification process, Infomatics can provide a higher standard of services to its clients and better engage with its employees.
"A lot of operations weren’t previously streamlined or as clear as they are now," said Muhammad Saleem, General Manager at Infomatics Corp. "Now employees in different departments have been trained appropriately. As a result, all the departments are more aware of their standard operating procedures."
These streamlined procedures applied to the sales, marketing, engineering, recruitment, human resources, accounting, contracts, and product departments.
The ISO 9001 designation certifies that we have implemented a quality management system throughout our organization. A QMS is a documented set of rules that that governs how a business provides goods and services to its customers. This certification also shows our commitment to maintaining the quality management system consistently as Infomatics grows.
"It’s not that once we get it we are done," said Meenaz Shariff, CEO of Infomatics India. "Every year we are being audited by that organization to see that we are in compliance."
Thanks to this certification, Infomatics Corp will be recognized as a business operating at a high standard to better serve its clients.
“It’s the measure by which other companies will see how we are operating," Shariff said. "All our processes are defined as part of this.”
