The data from across 100 companies between January and March, prepared by HAN Digital, indicates that one million employees would potentially resign this year, resulting in increased hiring costs for the IT services and Business Process Management firms. The technology services industry saw 12% attrition in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic-induced slowdown. By the end of 2021 however, the IT-BPM sector is likely to look at a 22% attrition rate.
“This trend will make a dent on the cash flow of the major employers as attrition cost is way above hiring costs,” Saran Balasundaram, CEO of HAN Digital, told ET. “We expect to see nearly one million resignations this year in the IT-BPM industry,” he added.
Between January and March, 5-8% of full-time employees who were onboarded left within the first 90 days. The report said HR leaders at large companies and contract staffing experts believe the trend would continue till year end. Nasscom said companies are staring at higher attrition due to the growth in demand after a prolonged lull last year.
“It varies from company to company. Last year, every company upped their utilisation, and they are now recognising the importance of a bench and hiring more. This is also resulting in higher attrition,” said Sangeeta Gupta, chief strategy officer, Nasscom.
India’s technology industry has seen a massive revival, both within the country and from global companies as they look to transform their technology infrastructure to enable access to applications remotely. Companies across the world are rewriting legacy code to modern software, shelving their data centres to move their applications to the Cloud. They are also looking to build new business models based on transactions and user data and grow their business. This has also led to growing demand for professionals who are trained to work on these projects.
“This trend will help job-seekers increase their salaries by an additional 15-25% and gain more savings potential as the critical mass of employees will continue to work from home till December 2021,” said Balasundaram.
