The Hindu Business Line : `Cos have to chart HR retention strategies'

WITH technology companies scaling up operations and expanding the scope of work out of India, they are faced with the challenge of low supply of employable talent, calling for a paradigm shift in their approach to manage and retain the exiting talent pool.

At an IT industry meeting organised by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) on "Human Capital management — Key success factors for knowledge-based industry," the President and CEO of Pinexe, Mr J.A. Choudary, said, "As MNCs and Indian companies take to intellectual property creation here presently from relatively lower-end services work a few years ago, we are faced with human resources crunch, particularly in high-end technology work. In fact, some reports suggest that attrition levels are as high as 40 per cent. The only way out is to develop appropriate retention strategies.

The Chief Operating Officer of Nipuna Services, Mr Sandeep Madan, described HR as a soft funky area, where it was always difficult to establish a right equation between demand and supply.

The Founder of Kenexa, Mr Rudy Karsan, said that the overall costs of human resources had rapidly increased; from about 26 per cent of the overall revenues, this has moved up to 62 per cent. The HR challenges could partly be tackled with better training and in-house retention moves.

The Director of Human Resources, Convergys, Mr Anthony Jose, said that there was a paradigm shift in the way human capital, the main resource in the software services industry, is managed. While corporations focus on external issues to sort out some of the day-to-day HR challenges, often the problem is within the organisation.