Bad Practices - Retention Techniques

With ever surging attrition comes a huge responsibility on the HR and Talent Management team – ways to retain talent, those resources that were hard to find and engage in business.

For some organizations the creativity comes in booms salvaging the business needs, yet there are some of them who have bad practices being followed with utmost ritual.

Laterals are always the hard nuts to be cracked and convince from altering their decision, however freshers can always be easier to convince, except the bright fellow who is a star performer. An industry secret always says never go for a lifelong high performer. They hop sooner than the rest and are the most dissatisfied of the lot.

Coming to the bad practice, as an industry standard hardly any organization would prefer a new resource that has scored lower than 60%. There are also places where the scores can be flexible if higher up the course line a definitive learning pattern has been discovered.

There are still some who believe in absorbing as many as they can to meet their resource requirements, putting an important clause in the appointment letter, stating that unless and until the employee doesn’t provide all the certificates and testimonials he/she shall not be confirmed from his/her probation status. To many it may sound as a fair deal, as collection of documents is a tedious task and 90% of employees do not have the entire gamut of things asked by organizations. Eventually documents keep coming which in turn yields to filing issues and loss of data.

However there’s a catch in the clause, despite sounding convincing. The employees in this case are unable to submit the requisite documents as they’ve not cleared the backlogs, hence do not possess the marksheets! As long as they keep writing papers, for which they no longer are regular students; they keep being in the fluid situation where they cannot put down the papers. The question of career progression keeps falling in their laps where proving to prospective employers about the extended period of probation can be a daunting task! After all we as recruiters do raise our eyebrows when we find discrepancies regarding difference of years between important qualifications which override the stipulated time. Or even if the appointment letter says the probation period is of 6 months and the experience letters includes the detail that the individuals’ probation lasted for 1.5 years.

Those organizations may suggest that they have no alternate option of retaining talent other than this technique coz of the geographical and industry challenges they face. Quite many cities/towns are rich in resources of a certain kind (manufacturing) or are placed at strategic locations (enveloped by benchmark IT industries). Creating a niche for themselves in a hoard of others is a challenge by itself for remaining in business and making profits. Under such conditions the workforce keeps rotating among 3-4 Co.’s that hold the fort in that area, serving competitors and bouncing back at previous employers. Like a shuttle they keep frequenting among the odd 3-4 power players, hence diluting the quality of domain knowledge and innovativeness in their skills and application. Times like these invite new breed to enter the veins of the organization bringing along new energy and enthusiasm and they do not mind many a times as long as they are working and being paid for it. 

But such justifications still do not balance the bad practice adopted at those places. Giving a chance to those that do not meet basic requirements, due to xyz reasons can still be said to meaningful. Eventually those organizations that allow some flexibility also link up initial appraisal to performance and aptitude of the employee. However tapping potential and not giving them due credit or motivating to go beyond their limits just coz they do not have marksheets and testimonials speaks volumes of unprofessionalism from a Co.’s viewpoint! Either they need to eradicate such practices or come out with better ways of retaining talent and getting work done from them!