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Attrition In Indian IT World

REWIND Attrition In Indian IT World

The impact of attrition varies on maturity and size of the organisations to absorb the problem financially and operationally.

SAUMYENDRA BHATTACHARYYA

I studied economics for ten years to be an `economist', learnt music for seven odd years to be a 'vocalist', worked in IT companies for almost two decades to be known as an 'IT specialist', participated in innumerable strategy sessions to be a 'strategist' and so the effort continued. I now have an identity crisis as to what I should summarily be referred as. Similar is the dilemma of many others in the IT industry of today. I checked with a few friends. 'Argumentalist' Ravi says "you need to do it professionally to be called so. A cricketer is called so if cricket is the primary source of his economic income". While I possibly agree to the approach, he apparently cites a wrong example as far as the primary source of our star cricketers is concerned! On the other hand, the 'journalist' Bhatia feels "simple solution… you are just what you are doing currently. A "goon" of the yester years is a "Neta" today! I prefer to be called a "generalist" now - not as per the conventional definition where "a generalist is one who has mastered and integrated more than one specialty". This is based on my recent self realisation that the term sells more in my industry! In fact, I have never seriously debated this issue - before I met Shashi, a member of my extended team sometime back. "Good morning! I am part of your team and my manager has sent me here for a quick discussion." "Come in, please. Tell me", I say politely. "I have a post-engineering experience for three years in software development. My manager agrees, I am a very quick learner. I also have plenty of customer appreciations. In fact, I do the job exactly at par with some seniors." "This is fantastic, keep up the good work", I support him. "As far as your comments on seniors, they have prior experiences in addressing crisis situations and are better positioned to mitigate delivery risk; our customers pay more for that. So even if you and the seniors work the same on a daily basis, they are different." "That's fine. But, I clearly feel that I have not been recognised for my great work during my one year stint in the organisation. I am surprised as well as frustrated that I have not been promoted to Team Lead. As the company believes in meritocracy, my less experience should not be a constraint for my vertical movement. However, my manager wants me to continue in the same role for at least two more years. I do not agree to this." Shashi is quite assertive with his logic.

"I have heard of your performance and that's why you received a higher increment." I try to console. "You need experience for a sustained period in a role before you are called so or for that matter, before the industry recognises you so" "Even with the increment, I am at least 30% lower than the offer from some other company. Moreover, I do not want to develop deep skills that require significant investment of time in one area. I feel that in a changing world in IT, this becomes an obstacle to my growth. The other company has already offered me the Team Lead position in a similar setup with a sort of commitment for further career growth in a year." Shashi now proposes a deal, "If you help with my promotion and some correction, I will be happy. I do not intend to leave this company otherwise!" The fact that attrition is a significant challenge and that the conversation is not a unique one, make me worried and unfortunately many others like me in the IT industry. Thousands of people in the Indian IT industry, I am sure, relate to this story as part of their professional routine! While it is difficult to measure the extent and impact of the problem at the industry-level, attrition is possibly the most severe problem of the Indian IT industry. First, there is no standard operating definition of attrition in the industry. Average annualised attrition rate may be the most common one but companies adopt different measures (monthly attrition rates projected for a conveniently defined year, 3 months or 6 months rolling average etc) that suit different contexts. Moreover, some companies, while declaring attrition numbers, conveniently include or exclude sections of population (for example, management trainees, employees under probation) and classify attrite people under buckets like voluntary-involuntary/regrettable-no regrettable and combinations thereof. Secondly, NASSCOM projects a 24-27% growth in IT revenue in 2007-08 over USD 39.6 Billion in FY 2006-07. The current employment for IT & ITES industry is 7.5 million and is expected to cross 10 Million by 2010. This indicates that
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the problem is not a temporary one but is going to last for some next few years. Thirdly, the cost of talent acquisition in booming IT market is higher than cost of retention for the same skill level. Thus any attrition typically increases cost of delivery and often dampens productivity too. The impact however, varies across skills, experiences of talents. For example, demand seems to be more for SAP or similar skills than mainframe and web technologies. Similarly, 2-4 years of experiences that form the main workforce in IT industry has a higher effective demand than others. Needless to say, the impact of attrition varies on maturity and size of the organisations to absorb the problem financially and operationally.

The problem of "fast growth aspirants" like Shashi just adds to this problem. If we leave aside a few exceptions, attrition in the industry is a zero-sum game. It's therefore, surprising that there is no acceptable framework or norms to judge the skill-level for a position across the companies after decades of maturity of this industry. Unfortunately, to our global clients in US and Europe, poor talent quality in off shoring model not only reflects an image of the company, it goes beyond to reflect the image of the Indian IT industry. In most cases, the gap in the expectation from a role vis--vis our positioning contributes to the problem. The recent NASSCOM initiative to introduce NAC-tech exam for a fresher in IT is a welcome beginning in the right direction. It is also time to set some benchmark that maps desired skill-levels to commonly used roles (like Team Lead) in the software industry. The industry forums should introduce some standard certification programmes, designed for India offshore IT business. The certification programme may set a benchmark for the industry to adopt, especially for export oriented units. This not only helps set the right expectation to export customers but also guides Shashis of the world to look for more sustainability in a role. Possibly we will have more aspirants for "specialists" and my confusion will end!

The author has experiences in IT and consulting organizations in India and abroad for about two decades. He can be reached at Saumyen@hotmail.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it.

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