Employee turn-over in the Indian Industry By: Mr. R.N. Ugra    ex-Senior Vice-President (marketing)  Jindal Iron & Steel Co. Ltd

The Indian Industry today has accepted the excessive turn-over of professionals as a natural occurrence and continues to have an ongoing process of recruitment etc. for all levels of management cadres. This is written off in many ways and blamed on external factors together with the mind set of the current working generation. I doubt if the captains of industry ever thought of looking inwards for the causes of this phenomenon. They justify their actions quoting Western Management gurus to reinforce their decisions on HRD activities.

The real causes are not difficult to discover if one tries to study our own Kautilya’s Arth Shastra.

Read management in place of the king and professionals in place of subjects.

In this way it seems that in the industrial situation, the employees come first and every other thing including the customer comes as the next priority. Well, the logic is, highly motivated professionals are the key to highly satisfied customers.

I feel that with globalization of outsourcing, India may loose out in the long term. The talent will flow towards the west with a faster speed than what we have experienced so far. We could therefore be lacking creative minds and become mere contract laborers of foreign enterprises.

The situation is no different today than what we have seen in the past. Our very own Dr. Hargovind Khurana, Prof. Sen, Mr. L.N. Mittal and many others had left us and won world acclaim.

It appears that our managements and Governments both have no idea about how to make the creative minds happy and satisfied. There is some factor which keeps the Khuranas, Sens and Mittals happy for years while working in one organization abroad as against feeling disgusted in an year or two while working there.

 Let us look into the Arth Shastra again. Kautilya laid down three responsibilities of the King:  

1.  RAKSHA, that means SECURITY

2.  PALAN, that means GROWTH 

3.  YOGAKSHMA, that means WELFARE

The meanings and perceptions of these three words are different in different environments (countries). We have to see the scenario in our country and interpret the meanings of these words before we apply them to formulate HRD policies and create satisfaction and happiness among our professionals.

While security is over emphasized in India we have failed to interpret the points 2 and 3 mentioned above.

The growth here is taken care of by Time Scale and seniority based bureaucratization of the hierarchy. It may work well in the case of Civil Services but it just kills the creativity in the professionals. Something has to be done to get the managements to rise above their traditional mind set and rethink on the growth prospect and satisfaction of their highly skilled creative employees so that they continue to be committed and produce results rather than looking for new jobs.

As far as welfare is concerned, the managements in general follow the western pattern which simply has not worked in India so far. By offering a large compensation package they have not been able to stop excessive employee turn over.

Welfare in India goes beyond the money being spent the way it is currently done by he companies on their employee. In the west things are arranged on a telephone call, and the person is not subjected to running around paying his rent, telephone bills, electricity bills, school fees, etc. Here you spend your quality working time worrying about your personal affairs, be it meeting the Income Tax Officer, filing your return arranging medical attention, getting an electrician or plumber or arranging transport when needed. The list is endless and irritating, leaving a feeling of helplessness and frustration.

The consultants and managements have to think about these as well as social, personal and working needs of the professionals in our own context & environment so as to earn the commitment and loyalty of the creative talent which would then keep contributing to their organizations for years to come.