Techgoss exclusive: Syntel strategy to halt attrition
By Sohab Mirza

Over the last six months, Techgoss had published a series of exclusive reports giving details of all that was happening inside BPO Syntel.  One report showed how that in the recent past Syntel was overly reliant on couple of key clients.  Techgoss had also reported on the exit of the CEO and senior HR people at Syntel.

On Feb 2, Techgoss had reported on how the ex-President and CEO, Keshav Murugesh, left Syntel BPO after all his good initiatives to strengthen and expand the company were blocked a number of times. WNS has snapped up Keshav to head their BPO operations. Keshav Murugesh started work as CEO and Board Member of WNS on Feb 19, 2010. WNS is among the top 3 BPO’s in India.

On Feb 8, Techgoss had done an exclusive news report on how the highly regarded global HR Head of Syntel, Swaminathan, had resigned after being cut out of the loop on certain issues. He preferred to walk rather than compromise his high standards.

On March 17, 2010, Techgoss had exclusively reported on the how the highly regarded IIT graduate Bharat Desai who co-founded Syntel in 1980 may have been slightly embarrassed after Dr. Vasant Raval was forced to put in his resignation from the Board of Directors.

Now a source close to Board tells Techgoss about Syntel’s strategy to reduce staff turnover in its KPO. The attrition level in Syntel has been quite high over the past few months. The target level of attrition for a new process, called Project Helium, which was recently setup in the month of November 2009 was 15% for the year.

However, according to management reports, the attrition target for the process has already reached 15% by April 10, 2010. In the month of March itself 15 employees of the Project Helium process have quit the company.

The issue is almost similar for other processes in Syntel. The situation is already quite grave for Syntel as the company is losing its experienced employees which in turn would mean that the less experienced employees have to be relied upon to handle the critical existing running processes. 

The company management realizes that once the salary hikes are announced in April 2010, the attrition would only increase. In order to reduce the attrition, the HR Department has pulled out reports from job sites like Naukri and Monster to determine the number of Syntel employees who are seeking jobs in other companies. This list was then forwarded to the respective process managers. All the employees in the list were called for a meeting with the process managers and the employees were asked to withdraw their CV's from the job sites.

Employees who have an annual appraisal rating of 3 or 4 (high category, called Excellent 20 or Enterprising 30) have been requested to stay. Some employees have also been told that they are due for their promotions and applying for jobs outside would jeopardize their promotions.

The company however does not seem to mind losing the employees with lesser ratings.

The grapevine news is that the management has decided to give hikes to employees only in the month of June .The arrears of the hike would be received in the June salary. The rationale behind the decision seems to be that the number of jobs available in the market would be lesser than what the market is currently offering.

What remains to be seen is that whether this move by the Syntel Management is going to reduce the attrition levels of the company. In my opinion, this seems to be a short sighted solution rather than a long term one.