The young, dynamic, and highly skilled software professionals have enabled the Indian IT industry to enjoy an enviable position in the global IT marketplace. Many IT companies are practicing various HR strategies to ensure that their employees contribute more to the organizations goals. The article analyzes the HR trends and issues in the Indian IT industry.
The
Indian Information Technology (IT) industry, though relatively young, has made
India proud with its spectacular performance in recent times. This industry has
grown at a frenetic pace in the last decade, creating high demand for software
professionals. India's comparative advantage in software industry development
is primarily based on the easy availability of trained and quality manpower at
a relatively low cost. Although India traditionally has had surplus of highly
qualified engineering and technical manpower, with the rapid growth of the global
IT industry over the past decade, demand has outstripped supply for several years
in a row. The worsening drain of trained manpower from India to other countries
has further aggravated the situation. With growing shortfall of trained IT manpower,
a large number of countries and companies from the Western world are turning their
sights towards India to bridge the gap. A number of large multinational IT companies
regularly recruit engineers and managerial manpower from India to meet their worldwide
requirements.
Due
to the high demand, companies have been continually developing novel and innovative
methods in managing the human resources. Despite treating software professionals
like associates and partners rather than employees, paying lucrative salaries,
offering employee stock options, attractive perks and a host of other benefits
the IT companies continue to face problems of high turnover, unrealistic employee
expectations, stress generated by the targets and deadline bound assignments and
massive layoffs of employees.
Unlike
traditional industries, IT industry which is a part of `new economy' employs highly
educated personnel better known as knowledge workers and gold collared workers,
who are very young, ambitious, mobile and having multiple expectations. Indian
IT companies are using various HR initiatives like Employee Stock Options (ESOPs),
flexible working hours and concepts, considering employees as associates and partners
to attract and retain the talent. Since the IT industry has come to play a significant
role in the national economy in general and the new economy in particular, and
since this industry is particularly people critical there is a need for studying
the employee dimension of this industry. |
