Are you losing the good people? - Business Today Special Report on India Attrition Study
An ATTRITION STUDY now? With companies desperate to cut headcount costs in any case? Right. Attrition cuts both ways, even in a downturn. While downturns can spawn lean and mean organisations, no company would like its best talent to walk away at any time, least of all when they are needed the most. Period. So, while forced attrition was out of the purview of our survey sample, it has been added as part of the research when the jobs environment changed. Here’s a primer that tells you why employees leave. Because, there’s no greater time to stand up and ask: ‘Are we losing the wrong people?’
The India Attrition Study 2008, done between October 2008 and March 2009, is a partnership between BT and PeopleStrong to figure out why employees quit. In the good times before September-October 2008, attrition in India Inc. was as high as 20 per cent (and up to 40 per cent in the booming services sector). Now, with the economy in a recession, BTPeopleStrong Research says, India Inc. is not only losing fair bit of top performers but plenty of the ‘Universal Leavers’, who form any company’s backbone.
Also, organisations that have shed chunks of the workforce are left with insecure employees who
tend to jump ship if they can to avoid a pink slip. HR experts underline that, in a downturn, voluntary attrition means letting go of top performers. Companies that ignore attrition in a downturn do so at their own peril.
“High-end talent is always high on aspiration,” says Shekhar Arora, Executive Director for HR at heavy vehicles maker Ashok Leyland. Their worry is not one of survival, but how fast they climb up the corporate ladder. “You tend to lose them at all times if you do not reasonably address their concerns,”
says Arora.
Losing employees to the competition is also top of mind for SRF Ltd, the Delhi-based manufacturer of nylon tyre cord fabric and such like. “The main challenge at present is to instill confidence in people and allay their fears of losing jobs. Since it is a good time to pick up talent from the market, it is also a problem to retain talent. They could also be an easy pick for others,” says Suresh Tripathi, President (HR), SRF.
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