HR SPECIAL...India Inc Interviews its Stars to Retain Talent

India Inc Interviews its Stars to Retain Talent

    In August this year, at a management meeting to review its quarterly results, IT services company Hexaware Technologies hit upon the idea of ‘stay interviews’ for its highperformers.
So a list was drawn up. And Hexaware’s top 25% performers in the two-to-six-year experience bracket faced a barrage of queries ranging from “What is it about your job that makes you jump out of bed every morning?” to “Do you think your talents are getting fully utilised here?”
The exercise paid off. A few top performers who’d earlier openly talked about exploring new options, informed their bosses that they were staying back.
The company is now working on a new rewards and recognition scheme, a demand that arose during the course of these interviews. “It was a hugely effective initiative,” says Hexaware Chief People Officer Deependra Chumble. “We’ve now decided to roll it out across the board.” Proactive Steps for Talent Retention
    Other companies such as the RPG Group, HSBC, Marico, Standard Chartered Bank, Maruti Suzuki, Lupin and NIIT are also discovering that such stay interviews or formalised feedback sessions help retain and engage employees better. The thinking is pretty simple. It makes much more sense to act on feedback from employees early on rather than do it through the exit interview route, when they are on their way out.
Companies coping with a talent pool that is fatigued by the intense pressures of the economic downturn could find this useful to gauge employee morale and roll out remedial measures. Across all RPG Group companies, for instance, the human resources department networks with critical talent to gauge employee sentiments on aspects such as job satisfaction, relations with reporting managers, rewards and recognition, and job challenges.
Based on this, it categorises employees as ‘red’, ‘amber’ and ‘green’. Immediate corrective action is taken for talent marked red and amber. Explains Arvind Agarwal, president and chief executive, corporate development and HR, RPG Enterprises: “This could lead to change in job responsibility, rewards and recognition and specific nomination to training programmes.”
The company has also made several changes in company policy based on employee feedback including, most recently, the increment and performance bonus plan. “We are now providing a part of the performance bonus on individual performance unlike earlier where the entire bonus was based on company performance,” says Agarwal. Success can be seen in continuous increased employee engagement scores across the group.
Marico discovered that employees wanted line of sight on future roles and constant challenges through additional responsibilities.
Based on this, it came up with a Structured Career Planning process for people completing a specific tenure in a role. It helped curb attrition that typically happens when a person is saturated in a role. Also, creating MINTOS (Marico Internal Talent Opportunity Scheme), an internal job posting programme, not only helped employees pursue areas of their own interest within Marico, but in the process, helped the company build and retain multi-skilled talent.
“These insights have enabled proactive steps for talent retention as well as enhance engagement and sense of belonging with the organisation,” says Marico EVP & head (HR), Ashutosh Telang.
At HSBC, stay interviews, or retention discussions, see top 25% employees across levels participate with their respective managers. Employees are told about what can be done for them (role enhancement or training options), encouraged to share concerns or doubts and provide suggestions.
This is an effective way of engaging and retaining employees, and were introduced a few years ago in businesses that faced high attrition, says Vikram Tandon, head (HR), HSBC India. “We are looking at building upon the process to ensure it becomes a part of the organisation’s DNA,” he adds.
ICICI Prudential Life calls them ‘skip-level meetings’ — one-on-one mentoring conversations between the manager and skip-level reports. These focus on the employee’s career goals and interests, professional and personal development and perspective-building. They happen once a year and are targeted at the top 600-700 managers, typically where retention policies are directed.
“Post the meet, necessary corrective actions are initiated to address concerns, thus minimising dissonance and increasing retention,” says Judhajit Das, chief-HR, ICICI Prudential. “One such policy initiated by the company is on ‘Continuing education for enhancing professional development’.”
At Standard Chartered Bank, employee feedback gauged through similar channels has helped keep HR policies and practices evolving. “The day-care centres launched for the staff was one such initiative as was a comprehensive medical policy for junior staff,” says Madhavi Lall, regional head (HR), India and South Asia.
Retention remains a key driver, given that employees appreciate knowing that the organisation is keeping their career goals in mind. CARD, or Career Discussions, launched last year at NIIT is for all employees to understand their career aspirations and suggest a possible path for the next three years. But suggestions of the top 15-20% employees are given priority.
NIIT has a set of reference documents called Mobility Maps to facilitate discussions which define career paths for distinct roles — changing business lines, functions or moving to a different role, tenure metrics and so on. “Managers might not always know the possibilities across all the businesses and functions. Mobility Maps helps them with this,” says Shampi Venkatesh, chief people officer, NIIT. The exercise has helped bring down attrition by 2-3% in the top performers’ bracket.
Lupin too has tasted success with two different programmes. Its ‘Top 100’ for junior and middle management has the company president for HR and function heads holding discussions with the top 10% employees every year for the past three years. Some 140 people have been a part of this, bringing attrition among top performers to nil.
Another intervention Lupin has for executives is ‘Expanding Horizons’. This picks up the best 30% employees who perform consistently well for two years and has resulted in bringing down the attrition to less than 5% among employees covered under the programme.
“This has served us well. We rarely recruit from outside. Amongst the 100 senior-level people, 75% would be home-grown,” says Divakar Kaza, president (HR), Lupin.

SREERADHA D BASU & SHREYA BISWAS ET121128