The job market in India is booming!!.And How? almost all companies have announced plans to increase hiring in the years 2011-2012 with some of the usual suspects like Infosys, TCS saying they will hire 30K+ this year - as laterals and as campus hires. (Another interesting point to ponder over - why do companies like Infy, TCS keep hiring campus grads letting go of an equal number of experienced folks every year. But will talk more on that in another post). And this boom is certainly not limited to IT sector. I see sectors like Banking, Finance, Infrastructure showing a positive hiring outlook as well.
One of the consequences of this hiring boom is attrition and voluntary exits across the various organizational levels. (But more visible in the junior and middle management levels). And managers, business leaders and HR executives have been looking for innovative ideas to stem attrition and keep the staff on payrolls for longer durations. Here is my take on the attritions we are currently seeing in the India markets. Not trying to offer any solution, but just raising a few questions which may lead us to the root cause.
Starting with a real life case. There is a bunch of guys who join X company straight out of college. They have similar backgrounds and scores in college and not much differentiates these guys while in college. Couple of years down the line, after going through 2-3 appraisals, at least a few of these will turn out to be better than others in terms of performance or interpersonal skills or learnability/adaptability or hardwork(going the extra mile) - the parameters which differentiate boys from the men in the real world. Which implies that the better performing guys are given a bigger raise and are up for promotion sooner than the average guys. Now what do the others "average" performers do? In the pre-liberalization era, these guys would stick there neck out and work hard to make themselves count and try to match better performing guys in the next appraisal cycle and try to outperform the achievers ( Such a healthy competition can be used by an effective manager/leader to the organization's advantage)
But in the growth scenario we are seeing today, all the average guy has to do is post his resume on a job site. Brush up his technical skills and voila - he lands a job which is paying on par with high performers/achievers. So he moves on and joins the other company and enjoys similar remunerations/perks as the guy who has worked his ass out to get to the top. So here is the question - are we in the quest for growth - fostering the Mediocrity? Isn’t the appraisal system supposed to reward the good and provide opportunities for the average to improve? Is Meritocracy leading to mediocrity?
Now I know some of you may say that the appraisal was not fair - my manager screwed up and could not get me a better rating, my appraiser is partisan to this guy who is also his fuseball or TT buddy etc.. But honestly in all these years I have been through appraisals, admittedly such cases exist but they are far and between. One or two exceptions do occur; otherwise the appraisal system in general has been good and fair. (I have worked for 3 $5billion+,20K employees organizations and have been through the 3 different kinds of appraisals in these companies.). So is it ok to provide the average guy with the same perks as the high performer?
Of course, in all fairness different companies have different yardsticks to measure the "good-fit" guy. But does this average guy go on to become a top performer in the next organization?(may be because of a better work culture, better opportunities) That would be worth tracking and finding and may form nice thesis for someone doing a PhD in organization behavior. Any takers ;)
Again in my own defence, I don’t say that this is the only reason why we are seeing attrition rates in double digits %. There are other reasons including better opportunities being thrown by the economy in terms of the work you want to do, the technology you want to embrace, the size of company you want to work with etc etc . These are reasons which acceptable but honestly I don’t see more than 10% of the overall attrition rate being caused by these reasons. Again another interesting research subject would be – to find out how many of the employees/workers who have been rated in the top 20% in their peer group actually quit and move to another company? And why do they quit? Higher studies, even better opportunities or just in search of greener pastures?
One of the consequences of this hiring boom is attrition and voluntary exits across the various organizational levels. (But more visible in the junior and middle management levels). And managers, business leaders and HR executives have been looking for innovative ideas to stem attrition and keep the staff on payrolls for longer durations. Here is my take on the attritions we are currently seeing in the India markets. Not trying to offer any solution, but just raising a few questions which may lead us to the root cause.
Starting with a real life case. There is a bunch of guys who join X company straight out of college. They have similar backgrounds and scores in college and not much differentiates these guys while in college. Couple of years down the line, after going through 2-3 appraisals, at least a few of these will turn out to be better than others in terms of performance or interpersonal skills or learnability/adaptability or hardwork(going the extra mile) - the parameters which differentiate boys from the men in the real world. Which implies that the better performing guys are given a bigger raise and are up for promotion sooner than the average guys. Now what do the others "average" performers do? In the pre-liberalization era, these guys would stick there neck out and work hard to make themselves count and try to match better performing guys in the next appraisal cycle and try to outperform the achievers ( Such a healthy competition can be used by an effective manager/leader to the organization's advantage)
But in the growth scenario we are seeing today, all the average guy has to do is post his resume on a job site. Brush up his technical skills and voila - he lands a job which is paying on par with high performers/achievers. So he moves on and joins the other company and enjoys similar remunerations/perks as the guy who has worked his ass out to get to the top. So here is the question - are we in the quest for growth - fostering the Mediocrity? Isn’t the appraisal system supposed to reward the good and provide opportunities for the average to improve? Is Meritocracy leading to mediocrity?
Now I know some of you may say that the appraisal was not fair - my manager screwed up and could not get me a better rating, my appraiser is partisan to this guy who is also his fuseball or TT buddy etc.. But honestly in all these years I have been through appraisals, admittedly such cases exist but they are far and between. One or two exceptions do occur; otherwise the appraisal system in general has been good and fair. (I have worked for 3 $5billion+,20K employees organizations and have been through the 3 different kinds of appraisals in these companies.). So is it ok to provide the average guy with the same perks as the high performer?
Of course, in all fairness different companies have different yardsticks to measure the "good-fit" guy. But does this average guy go on to become a top performer in the next organization?(may be because of a better work culture, better opportunities) That would be worth tracking and finding and may form nice thesis for someone doing a PhD in organization behavior. Any takers ;)
Again in my own defence, I don’t say that this is the only reason why we are seeing attrition rates in double digits %. There are other reasons including better opportunities being thrown by the economy in terms of the work you want to do, the technology you want to embrace, the size of company you want to work with etc etc . These are reasons which acceptable but honestly I don’t see more than 10% of the overall attrition rate being caused by these reasons. Again another interesting research subject would be – to find out how many of the employees/workers who have been rated in the top 20% in their peer group actually quit and move to another company? And why do they quit? Higher studies, even better opportunities or just in search of greener pastures?
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