Make Your People Want To Stay

High attrition rates appear to be among the top three concerns for CEOs
across the country who are burning their midnight oil to find out the best
possible ways to prevent people from leaving their organization. There are no
sure shot solutions to this problem, but some introspection could throw up
interesting insights

It is no surprise that human resource issues, whether it is getting the right
kind of people or retaining them, are among the biggest concerns for
organizations across the globe today. While attracting fresh talent is an
endless job, what has gotten the head honchos all worried, is retaining these
people.

No amicable solution is yet in sight, but discussions across various forums
have tried to delve into what can be the best practices that can be adopted to
help retain skilled manpower. This is the reason that the DQ Channels Solution
Providers Summit in Port Blair too had a session on 'Manpower Retention'. Shyam
Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief, Cybermedia who is also the Executive Coach of the
company gave a presentation on the topic.

Starting his presentation Malhotra said, “Manpower retention is one of the
issues, which occupies the CEO's attention the most. Through an internal
dipstick survey that we conducted shows that not many organizations have a
dedicated team to look into manpower retention issues. Indeed it is surprising
that most companies have placed manpower manage­ment under the care of the HR
department, which does not appear to be the best practice. The need of the hour
is to devote more time and budgets to address the issue proactively.”

He also revealed how he spends at least one-third of his time on HR issues.
Prateek Garg of Progressive Infotech, who has a base of 800 people, agreed with
this and said that he too spends at least 20 percent of this time on overseeing
manpower and his HR personnel report directly to him.

“It is important to check if employees have a job of their desire and provide them with the required work environment that would prompt them to come to work daily ” Shyam Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Coach, CyberMedia India

Engaging employees

Speaking about the various tools of employee engagements, Malhotra said that
some of the tools that organizations can adopt to ensure people retention
include indicating a clear growth path for employees. According to him, salary
hikes alone would not be enough to retain people. In addition, organizations
must delegate various responsibilities and give power to their employees for
decision making so that a sense of belonging and ownership prevails among them.

“It is also important to check if the employees have a job of their desire,
and provide them with the required work environment that would prompt them to
come to work on a daily basis. While working on the employee end, it is also
crucial that managers are trained on various aspects of relationship building
with their team because that would go a long way in helping to retain people,”
Malhotra added.

He also focused on another aspect that while entrepreneurs make employees
aware of their share in the profits, if the business does well, they don't
involve them to participate in the liabilities as well. “Employees are also
willing to take the rap and admit they have goofed up and will face the
liabilities. But are we as business managers giving them this opportunity?”
Malhotra questioned.

Interested channel

It was underlined during the presentation that manpower retention is not a
one-time exercise but rather something that needs regular and dedicated time.
Malhotra also suggested that an HR consultant could probably be outsourced in
order to ensure that people retention is a key activity within the organization.

Responding to his sugges­tions, partners assembled at the meeting felt that
people retention was certainly a point of grave concern. Some of the measures
that could help employee retention, according to partners could include
communicating clearly the employee growth path while also spending time and
money for mentoring various people in the organization who would be involved in
its growth and expansion. A defined increment structure for the employees,
according to many partners could serve as a bonus.

Agreeing with their thoughts, Malhotra felt that while there were no perfect
answers as to what define the best practices for people retention, some of the
suggestions would certainly go a long way in tackling attrition and retaining
skill sets.

Various partner also noted that they lose people to other companies,
especially MNC vendors, who offer higher salary packages. Most partners are
unable to match the remunera­tions offered by these MNCs, because it will then
affect their bottomline.

But Malhotra asked partners, “Our manpower resource bills will keep rising,
but have they risen sharply in contrast to our bottomline growth? If this is so
then it is imperative to look closely at this gap and find means to narrow it,
so that we continue to be profitable,” he advised.

And this is precisely why he urged partners to find answers to why their
employees are leaving rather than take an assembly-line solution to curb
attrition. No doubt, this left most of the people in the audience in a
thoughtful mood. Said Suresh Ramani of Mumbai's Tech Gyan Solutions, “The gyan
session on retaining manpower was very good. It is apparent that this issue was
very important, but we are not doing much about it.” Another partner termed the
session as thought provoking.

It can only be hoped that now that partners have been woken to the need to
have a process for manpower manage­ment, they will do more to empower their
employees and thereby curb attrition.

DQC News Bureau