To Attract or Retain?

At a panel discussion on ‘Human Resources’ at the Asia Society and the

CII-backed conference  in Bangalore, it was amazing to see the large

turnout of fellow-Indians national and Asians. The icing on the cake was the

degree of interest and the level of participation exhibited toward the theme of

facing challenges in producing the 2 million professionals that the IT Industry

will need by 2008 to make the $80-billion software dream a reality.

Speaker after speaker waxed eloquent on the need to build more schools of

higher learning and increase the spread of IT Education across every school and

college. However, I could not help but raise a contrarian view–is the

challenge only that of attracting fresh talent, or is it one of retaining the

existing workforce?

There is no doubting that in the last few years, attrition has been the one

major problem faced by the software industry. While a clutch of high-value, high

capability firms like Infosys Technologies have managed to keep attrition down

to single-digit levels, there are others where attrition levels of close to 40%

are not unheard of. In IT mecca cities like Bangalore, it is common practice

among software professionals to juggle two or three lucrative offers and jump

jobs at the drop of a hat. In Hyderabad, the last few H1B seasons have seen

hordes of US wannabes getting onto planes to fulfil their American dream.

In this scenario, retaining software engineers has become the biggest

challenge. While the current slowdown in the US has forced programmers and

analysts to think twice before leaving established firms in search of

greenbacks, HR managers still cross their fingers every time their stars board

contract buses to go home after a workday, wondering if they will be back the

next morning!

Motivational challenges

The IT sector is one place where the Need Hierarchy theory of Maslow gets

turned on its head. Much more than the hygiene factors of salary and roti kapda

aur makan–maybe today’s software nerds take that for granted–there is the

desire for fresh challenges, new technologies and a new country to operate in

every few months. It takes just one failed project or one tiff with the boss to

send the individual off in search of greener pastures. And this may well lead to

the brain drain phenomenon being aggravated or for ‘Brain Circulation’, as

Prof Sadagopan of IIT Bangalore termed it, to take place with renewed vigor.

How have the more successful companies–Infosys, Zensar and Aptech, among

others, managed to do a better job of retaining high performers than the rest?

Certainly not by paying more and more but by using a judicious mix of financial

incentives (stock options anybody?) and feel-good factors to keep morale high

and adrenaline flowing.

My own favorite has always been the 5-F approach: a fast growth company

offers fast-track careers (Infosys); a focussed approach to technologies,

services and vertical domains gives every employee the chance to specialize (Zensar);

a flexible approach to roles, responsibilities and service lines do the trick (Aptech).

As important is a friendly attitude and the breaking down of management-employee

boundaries and the creation of a fun environment where spirits remain high at

all times.

In every career, there are ups and downs and young emotional software

professionals, fresh out of technology or business schools, are subject to

enormous peer pressure from friends proclaiming their higher salaries and stock

options. Families across the seas paint a rosier picture of life than it

actually is…there are hundreds of Indian software engineers between San Jose

and San Francisco looking for places to stay and holding temp jobs at McDonald’s

to make ends meet in the current slowdown.

In the present scenario, with anxieties over the stock market and the US

blues coming through, it is imperative that strong leadership be available to

show the way, not just by a shared bision but by clear goals–objectives and

strategies for every service line and every geography.

The new resource challenge

On the subject of resource building, it is important to recall that the

original creators of the Indian reputation in the US were IIT graduates who went

to the US to do their Masters (Computer Science) and stayed on to work for the

Intels and Oracles and Ciscos. They helped build enormous value and gained in

reputation for the next two generations. NR Narayana Murthy rightly pointed out

in Bangalore that the dwindling number of candidates for PhD programs does not

bode well for the future of Academic Quality in the country.

If that weren’t enough, the quality of FOBies (fresh-off-the-boat) in the

US may end up compromising the reputation of the country if software chiefs are

not choosy about the quality of people they opt for. So what is the means to

meeting the human resource needs for next five to ten years? While the building

of more IIITs is a worthy cause, it will take too much effort and investment on

the part of the government, both of which are in short supply.

An industry-government partnership with external funding can build quality IT

training facilities at existing RECs and other second-level engineering schools.

This would also ensure broad-basing of the supply chain and a focused effort by

private institutions toward ensuring that a minimum number of their passouts

have ability enough to move directly into the software industry. This will add

to the talent pool that industry so desperately needs. In the words of Robert

Frost, the industry has "promises to keep and miles to go before we

sleep".

Ganesh Natarajan



former president of Aptech and a founder-director of BConnectB, is deputy

chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies.