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| HOME | INFOTECH | HEADLINES | |||
| September 26, 1997 |
Brain damageThoughts on ways to retain software
Madhuri Krishnan in Bangalore
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Brain damage
• Newbies and freebies • Strategies for service • Cybercity talks end |
The speakers are really picky about their approach to the subject because every software professional worth his or her cursor is there, ready with the cynicism which gets acquired early in nerdom.
Hema Ravichandran of Empower Associates, a human resource consultant, begins with a vivisection: "The typical software professional belongs to Generation X which came after the baby-boomers. This SP is highly educated, has had international exposure, comes from a strong middle-class background, is quick to create assets, is secure and highly adaptable."
Ravichandran continues: "Given the profile, what the SP is looking at is not just a good compensation package which is anyway equal to international standards. The professional is also seeking a good quality of life, both on and off the job. She needs constant appraisal; a measure of success is important to her. How her superiors regard her performance is important too.
"This professional most definitely expects some global exposure and an open environment at work which includes flexi-hours and Friday dressing," concludes Ravichandran and is immediately greeted with guffaws from the software professionals in the audience who can't just believe their own profile.
Ravichandran is undeterred: "The employer needs to ensure a resilient workforce, where the SP's generic ability to learn is far greater than the knowledge he has come in with. In short, the company is looking for a balanced portfolio and a long tenure, though reality dictates that the average SP looks at staying in an organisation for under two years."
"For these reasons, the organisation must not reward the SP with the nominal 20 or 30 per cent increases but a substantial measure of reward, even deferred, must be given. Most importantly, the organisation can make the employee a key shareholder of the company by creating in him a sense of ownership which will retain him longer.
"Transfers to other branches of the organisation, intensive training programmes, manpower working schemes that keep an employee in touch with the market are required along with the mandatory sabbatical, the holiday resort vacation." This time the guffaws are really audible.
Anita Ramachandran, another human resource management professional, spoke on how companies could retain a good employee. In her estimation, looking at retaining an employee for 10 years is unrealistic but one could still consider baits like providing housing which, one day, could be owned by the employee, stock option, an overseas posting, flexibility in working hours and rapid increases in compensation.
She also made a point of matching jobs to the personality of the employee. Conventionally, there are only under-30s who opt for a software professional's job, but there are certain areas where the stable nature and maturity of an older employee could be tapped, even in the hurly burly of software development.
Hewllet Packard Vice-President Himanshu Jain advocates communication on a large scale. He allows extended coffee breaks every other day so as to help people interface with each other. It is the key to motivate and enhance the employer-employee relationship, he claims.
Kaushik Vyas of SAIC, US, has a tale to tell. His story of the way employees are treated in his organisation is an eye-opener. "The most important is that they offer stock options, a definite value-addition for any employee who works with them. In fact, if an employee does not receive it after his first year, the bosses wonder why he wasn't offered a stake."
Vyas claims "Our employees were on the Internet way before it became popular. We were on the ARPANET! Other areas include national security, health care, environment and transportation."
And you won't believe how they handle newcomers to the company. "If the new employee hasn't already had lunch with his group manager during the first week and had a meeting with the chairman of the company during the first month, it's not done. And just to keep abreast of what's happening in the organisation at various levels, things are kept very transparent. So much so that employees are given audio tapes every weekend to listen to in the car on the way home... just keeping him hooked!
Vyas says: "Employee ownership plans in the US are being done by both public companies like Bell South, Boeing and Xerox and private ones like Cargill Seeds, Hallmark and Lincoln Electric. So, in essence, you offer the employee to even buy his stock offer bonus, retirement plans and ESOPs (employment stock ownership plans)."
Vyas relates an incident during a seminar when an employee stood up and questioned the senior-most manager of the firm, saying, "OK, I own a million dollars worth of stock in the company, what changes are you going to make?"
Vyas concluded by saying "The other interesting work ethic followed by SAIC is that correction is always done by peers, there is no Gestapo controlling them. And our motto? I care because I own which also reads, I own because I care."