IT companies and high attrition rates: Suggestions to curb

In a post recession world, the companies are having a new challenge. During recession it was a challenge to maintain the profit margins and to be sustainable, now the challenge is to retain the people. Yes, attrition is at a never before levels. Not that companies are not taking steps to curtail this, just that the methods used by company are not employee oriented, a mistake on the lines of cutting wages during recession.

Companies must understand humans as resources and not as some machines. Being in the industry for almost seven years, I could think of some methods to curtail recession in an employee friendly ways, a win win situation for both employees and companies.

• Make the work place more flexible : With population growing at such a rate it is not feasible for the large IT companies to have its large offices in the city. Hence, employees have to spend on an average between 2 hours to 4 hours daily for commuting. This cuts through their productivity and also has adverse effect on the health of the employees. Introducing flexible measures like work from home, change in work location,  flexible work timings, four day work week where employees stretch for 10-12 hours each day and take an additional day off with support from home will be beneficial for employees travelling long distance. The catch here is that none of these policies should be applied in general and employees should be given flexibility to chose them as and when necessary.

• Misc/Util Services : Starting a association sort of thing and enabling them to take care of useful activities like land sale/purchase. We all know of people in IT company helping each other in buying/selling land and forming groups among themselves to do this thing. If the whole thing is done from the company with company behind the association, it will give the whole thing a credibility and will see more participation. Also, such associations can give lands around the office at a subsidized rates(companies might give some easy re-payment loans to employees) it will in turn help in resolving the travelling woes also. The feasibility of such a step needs to be analysed though, but I do not think it will be a big problem in getting required permissions.

• Again the next point is about flexibility. Companies need to be flexible in terms of readily allowing movement of employee from one team to the other across domains. We have seen companies recruting people from outside with the same skill set as of existing employees where the existing employees have been asking for a change. This really demoralises the employee morale. Though team movement of an employee would mean knowledge is lost, but it is always better if the employee is in the same company and can be contacted in case of any emergency situation rather than he sitting in a rival company.

• Give more growth options to the employees.  Growth as of now in the service industry means moving to a managerial position. Not all people have the necessary managerial skills, but want to be promoted. Hence, resulting in bad managers and dissatisfied employees working under him. There should be a technical ladder for growth as well. I would say, this is there in some companies upto a certain extent. But need to be more defined and streamlined.

These were some of the points I could think of which would create a win win situation for both employees and the companies. Discuss and add on more.