Lost In A Pile Of Cash

In case of BPO/IT firms, where attrition rates are still as high as 40 per cent, new incentives like marital bonds between colleagues are being introduced to increase employee loyalty. So, if you are working for an Infosys or a TCS, and you get married to a colleague, there's a marriage gift waiting for you. In TCS, it's Rs 1 lakh each for the husband and the wife with a foreign jaunt thrown in. In Infosys, it's a new B-segment car! BPO firms like IBM Daksh pursues a policy of not hiring candidates who have a history of frequent job shifts. "Any candidate who has changed three jobs in five years is a strict no-no for us," says an industry source. Mercer's Chakraverti adds that BPO firms are also recruiting agents from smaller cities like Jaipur, Vijayawada, Bhopal and Jamshedpur as the youth from the smaller centres are, as of now, perceived to be more loyal and less inclined to change jobs at the drop of a hat. "It obviously brings to light questions like quality of talent. But it seems to be working for a lot of companies," she adds.

The last time India witnessed stratospheric salary increases and mind-boggling attrition rates was during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. And everybody knows what followed: pink slips, salary and recruitment freezes, and an overall slowdown of the economy. Nokia and LG fear that indiscriminate increase in labour costs will eat into India's cost-effectiveness. "Such salary levels are not sustainable even in the medium term. Global firms will think twice before deciding on India," says LG's Verma. "The direction of the job market would depend a lot on how many of the new ventures fare. If some of the big-ticket ones fail, there is bound to be a glut in the talent market," warns Hora of Synergy consultants. And according to Mercer, unless some rationalisation sets in, excitement about the India story may begin to wane, and that could have a telling effect on the overall growth too.