Bhaskar Das, Head of Human Resources, Cognizant Technology
Solutions, Europe and India, came across as a 'surprise package'
for us who were expecting a 50-year old something when we went to
interview him. In this the second and concluding part of his chat
with Chennaibest.com, he discusses HR issues that are peculiar
to the IT industry.
Reasons for high employee turnover in the
IT industry?
Skewness
of the demand-supply chain. The size of the talent pool is less
than what is required. It is as simple as that. So the same number
of people go around filling different slots. The education system
globally, and particularly in India, did not change anticipating
the kind of jobs that would be coming in the future. If you take
India for example, the primary drivers for higher education were
the five-year plans and they were based on the Nehruvian model of
economic growth, looking at primarily basic infrastructure like
steel, mining and cement. While in the 70's things were changing,
our education system did not anticipate that change and continued
to churn out what would have benefited the older method of working.
Today, typically in a campus you have 30 or 40 seats for Computer
Science. It is not that only 30 or 40 people are educable in Computer
Science. The number is far higher. If we had anticipated and made
those kind of investments in the late 70's or early 80's, we could
be churning out a larger number of computer-savvy students who would
be able to fill these positions and probably ease the market to
a great extent.
Look at the requirements of countries like the US. To work in US,
you have to conform to their immigration and visa laws and one of
the primary factors there is at least 16 years of minimum study,
while our graduation system is 15 years. It is not going to take
anything to add one more year and that should have been added a
long time ago. If we are talking about 60,000 to 80,000 good engineering
graduates coming out every year, we have at least six to ten times
that number of good graduates majoring in Physics or Biology. Nobody
has found out whether they could be software professionals or not.
They are there because in the relative positioning they could not
get a rank. So they are not engineers because they could not get
a rank there. If we had been able to give everybody 16 years of
education, the pressure would have been off our so called 'engineers'.
The pressure has nothing to do with engineering, but with 16 years
of education. These kinds of artificial barriers have been set up
and soooner or later these will have to go by way of market forces
itself.
The same education system by the way (...not everything is wrong
with it), has given us two important things, a mathematical rigour
and an ability to communicate in English. And if these two things
were not there, India wouldn't be the kind of IT power that it is
today.
Old economy business houses blame the IT industry
for creating an exaggerated evaluation of people as reflected in the
salaries. Your comments.
I
don't believe there is something called 'old economy' and 'new economy'.
People have needs. These needs have to be fulfilled. Whoever fulfils
those needs, is in business. No one writes software for the sake
of writing software. Rice has to be grown, food has to be eaten,
people will fall sick and go to hospital or they may feel cold and
wear warm clothes. These are all needs that are there to be fulfilled.
In the process of fulfilling those needs software comes in and finally
where do you think that all the software that we write goes? It
goes to your neighbourhood supermarket where the buying/selling
transaction of all your shopping is processed. The purpose of the
business is that one young kid wants a chocolate. That is his desire,
his need. If all the needs we had, went away, none of the software
that is being written, would be written. In that sense there is
only one economy - the economy of fulfilling these needs.
The second point is that it is an open market. People with the
relevant skills are highly valued because there are fewer people.
The same IT industry, if it were to be flooded hypothetically by
a few million people, won't economy levels crash? In e-commerce
or when new technology like EJB and Java came up, initially there
was a huge demand; therefore they sold at huge prices. Now the demand
is easing, therefore the prices are coming down.
If you can give to an individual Rs 1 lakh and make profit and
someone says "I can give Rs 5 lakh and still make similar
profit", obviously all things remaining equal, it is right
to do so. If there are better business models which generate better
revenues and profits and a proportion of that is given back to individuals
as salaries, wages or increments, I don't see anything wrong in
it.
There
is a bigger difference, which your question looks at. A disproportionate
amount of the 'new economy' is knowledge- based. But that doesn't
mean to say that all 'new' is knowledge-based, but that the majority
of it is knowledge-based. And knowledge fortunately or unfortunately
resides in people. Now look at a typical company like CTS. My total
fixed assets is a negligible proportion of my total valuation. I
don't have any machinery or a power plant. In fact, right now we
don't have any of our own assets, our own land. All my assets walk
into the office at nine 'o' clock and walk away at five 'o' clock
or six 'o' clock.. or whatever time they want to walk away. Now,
if people are the factor on which this business depends on so much,
obviously they will be more focus on getting them and keeping them.
I don't think anyone is pampering anyone. The question is on what
resource am I running and leveraging the business? So it is not
about old economy or new economy. A star football player may have
the kind of insurance for his leg that we wouldn't dream of. That's
where the whole business is happening. Probably millions and millions
of dollars is moving on that leg muscle of his - from the gate money
to the betting (forget the prize money). That leg muscle demands
a premium and you cannot say he is being lavish to that leg muscle.
Skewness
of the demand-supply chain. The size of the talent pool is less
than what is required. It is as simple as that. So the same number
of people go around filling different slots. The education system
globally, and particularly in India, did not change anticipating
the kind of jobs that would be coming in the future. If you take
India for example, the primary drivers for higher education were
the five-year plans and they were based on the Nehruvian model of
economic growth, looking at primarily basic infrastructure like
steel, mining and cement. While in the 70's things were changing,
our education system did not anticipate that change and continued
to churn out what would have benefited the older method of working.
Today, typically in a campus you have 30 or 40 seats for Computer
Science. It is not that only 30 or 40 people are educable in Computer
Science. The number is far higher. If we had anticipated and made
those kind of investments in the late 70's or early 80's, we could
be churning out a larger number of computer-savvy students who would
be able to fill these positions and probably ease the market to
a great extent.
I
don't believe there is something called 'old economy' and 'new economy'.
People have needs. These needs have to be fulfilled. Whoever fulfils
those needs, is in business. No one writes software for the sake
of writing software. Rice has to be grown, food has to be eaten,
people will fall sick and go to hospital or they may feel cold and
wear warm clothes. These are all needs that are there to be fulfilled.
In the process of fulfilling those needs software comes in and finally
where do you think that all the software that we write goes? It
goes to your neighbourhood supermarket where the buying/selling
transaction of all your shopping is processed. The purpose of the
business is that one young kid wants a chocolate. That is his desire,
his need. If all the needs we had, went away, none of the software
that is being written, would be written. In that sense there is
only one economy - the economy of fulfilling these needs.
There
is a bigger difference, which your question looks at. A disproportionate
amount of the 'new economy' is knowledge- based. But that doesn't
mean to say that all 'new' is knowledge-based, but that the majority
of it is knowledge-based. And knowledge fortunately or unfortunately
resides in people. Now look at a typical company like CTS. My total
fixed assets is a negligible proportion of my total valuation. I
don't have any machinery or a power plant. In fact, right now we
don't have any of our own assets, our own land. All my assets walk
into the office at nine 'o' clock and walk away at five 'o' clock
or six 'o' clock.. or whatever time they want to walk away. Now,
if people are the factor on which this business depends on so much,
obviously they will be more focus on getting them and keeping them.
I don't think anyone is pampering anyone. The question is on what
resource am I running and leveraging the business? So it is not
about old economy or new economy. A star football player may have
the kind of insurance for his leg that we wouldn't dream of. That's
where the whole business is happening. Probably millions and millions
of dollars is moving on that leg muscle of his - from the gate money
to the betting (forget the prize money). That leg muscle demands
a premium and you cannot say he is being lavish to that leg muscle.
