Employee expectaion vs organisation challenges in IT industry

 

 

A volatile IT business landscape breeds challenging at every step. Retention of talent is thus a nightmare. According to NASCOM, attrition in the IT services segment ranges from 15-18% and even larger IT companies’ attrition reported is between 14-18% in recent time. Though high attrition is not new to IT industries, in a recent post it has become challenging to meet employee’s aspirations and stay abreast with the career path of employees.

 

What Employees Wants:

·         Every employee wishes to be rewarded with an compensation increment of 15-20 % every year

·         They wish for role change/promotion every 2 years

·         Desire onsite opportunity after completing 2-3 years in the firm

·         Flexibility to choose work location

·         Allignment of work /task/project as per employee skillset

Challenges with Organization:

·         With employee cost to company being around 35-50% of the total cost of the company,most of the organizations cannot factor in increment numbers to match the expectations. In last 2-3 years increments offered by most IT companies range from an average 5-8%. This also takes into account individual compensation correction to high performing employees and additional increment based on niche skill.

·         The growth drop witnessed by the IT industry in India made it a hard play for firms to offer promotions based on tenure. The trend has been promotions to employees based on the individual performance, playing the next level role, contribution to business growth etc. The result is companies worrying about being top heavy. Less opportunities for career growth in the managerial level has been the repercussion.  The technical folks however have a field day with unlimited opportunity for individual growth.

·         Onsite aspirations are very high among IT engineers. To complement it, India files the highest number of H1 application to US every year. 30-40% people get selected through lottery system who can travel to US on work assignments. Non-USA onsite opportunities are very small compared to the USA. Organization picks high potential, long term serving employee & niche skilled employees for travel to client location. Also client organization have now begun operating offshore centers in India which in turn as reduced the onsite opportunities. The mismatch is in the requirement verses the aspiration. IT employees with 2-3 years’ experience pitch for onsite travel, while the client firms expect experienced folks.

·         One of the common rifts between employees and organizations is work location. Business need is the basis for allocation of workforce. Companies concentrate on disturbing employees based on skill set and business requirement. Thus there exists a thin line between meeting business needs and satisfying employee need to work closer to home locations.  The call is for employees to be flexible and focus on learning in the initial phase of their career.

·         The tech industry is always in flux. Frequent new products and category innovation define and redefine the sector’s constantly shifting landscape. This demands employees to gear up to meet client’s requirements in terms of technology and shift and mode of operations. Employees hesitant to reskill to suit newer technologies and the constant hurdle for management.

Common approaches to these challenges can offer a temporary fix, but the onus is on the management and HR to devise newer ways of working together to face these hurdles.