Icons with Clay Feet

The DQ Top20 lists that Dataquest publishes every year, have been necessary
reading for me, all my professional life. Those are the issues that I tend to
thumb through, the most, all year roundtill the next Top20 is released. I was
not too happy, a few years ago, when they decided to chop data and release them
in four consecutive issues but Ive grown accustomed to their ways. Ive also
learnt to appreciate the way they help to differentiate a companys performance
from its popularity as an employer. I have found it very interesting, for some
years now, that the basic Top 20 rating based on turnover and performance, is so
very different from DQs last list that rates candidates as employers.

The contrast is somewhat heightened this year: only three of the top 20 tech
players, rated by their turnover, make it to the Top20 list of best employers.
If one may read a message implicit in thisthe high performing biggies, whom
media with boring regularity, dubs as the bellwether companies, are not exactly
the ones whom their own employees rate very highly as great outfits to work for.

There is another nuance in the Best Employer ratings published in the last
issue of Dataquest: some of the biggest IT companies in India, chose, for the
first time, not to participate in the survey. They include those towering
performers, those swashbuckling, standard bearing- three musketeers of the
Indian IT industryTCS, Wipro and Infosys. Also opting out this year, were India
based entities of three global mega brandsMicrosoft, Intel and Sun.

We can only guess why these big IT players, decided, possibly for the first
time, not to share data on their human resource indicators, or to allow outside
consultants to interview their own employees. Some (according to the DQ article
pegging the findings) cited corporate policies, which prevented them from
sharing sensitive HR information.

The lyrics of a recent hit song, Save me from what I want by American
songwriter-singer, Annie Clark (she works under the name St Vincent), comes to
my mind: Honey, what reveals you/ is what you try and hide away.

The twelve months gone by, have been one of the worst periods for global
technology-driven industry. By the very nature of their international
operations, India based companies have almost without exception, been sucked
into this recessionary spiral, and even ones with the healthiest balance sheets
have barely managed to stay afloat. Average salary increases have hovered around
1.4%, and these numbers hid salary cuts of up to 7%, that thousands of employees
had to undergo.

In a reaction to panicky practices of many US based IT corporations, some of
the biggest India based players implemented what seemed like knee-jerk staff
reductions in the early days of the bad times, which inevitably made big
headlines in Indian newspapers, and adverse publicity in our unfettered
electronic media. No one knows quite how the downsizing and belt trimming went,
and now that we are told, the worst is over, no one would ever be any wiser;
unless ofcourse, one had to share numbers with an employee satisfaction survey.

One would have thought that the garam hawa of recession that engulfed
Indian tech industry, must have scorched everyone, without exception, creating a
level playing field of its own, so bigger players were unlikely to have had it
worse than others. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Our industry
icons, about whose innovative business practices we are always hearing, also had
it in them to innovate on their HR side to ensure that their employees remained
loyal during the bad spell? Clearly this was not the caseif they now seem to be
modest, if not downright coy about their performance as ideal employers, rather
than as hot shot IT providers, may be they have much to be modest about. If they
were unwilling to let third party analysts interview a statistical sample of
their workforce, and ask them what they thought about their employers, may be
that is because the truth might just be a wee bit different from the shining
public perception they have long enjoyed.

They may have stayed out of the survey, but our IT leaders will benefit from
picking up a copy of Dataquest September 15 issue, and reading the Employer
Survey with some attention. They will learn, how companies with a hundredth of
their resources, retained fierce loyalty with their employees, with humane and
sometimes innovative practices. They can also read (what for me was
fascinating), the conclusions of the surveying agency, IDC at the end of each
listing, which provide useful pointers to negative as well as positive reactions
to a companys HR practices. Brand expert, Harish Bijoor told me, a few years
ago, when talking about employee retention in the BPO industry; Call center
agents will switch jobs for a better samosa! The last year has changed all
that. But it may also change perceptions of Indias large and talented workforce
in a more basic way.The young and talented might choose less sexy employers,
whose HR practices are seen as more friendly, even if the monthly take away is
smaller.

The DQ-IDC Employer Survey is a mirror of the evolving practices in the
Indian IT industry, as it strives to carve out an even larger chunk of global
business. Sadly, those who said pass to the invitation to be assessed and
rated, seem to want, not a mirror but a sundial. This one reflects reality,
good, bad, or ugly. The other records only the sunny hours.

Anand Parthasarathy

The author is a veteran technology journalist and edits the IT portal
IndiaTechOnline

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in