Sensing that falling employee morale as a result of layoffs and salary cuts could mar a fair assessment of their HR policies, the top four Indian IT firms - Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies, Wipro and HCL Technologies - declined to participate in the annual Dataquest-IDC Best Employers Survey for the first time in eight years.
Their participation holds significance since the top four IT firms employ 40 per cent of the slightly over 2 million IT professionals in the industry.
Their fears were not unfounded, since the average salary increases of information technology professionals was down to 1.4 per cent for 2009 - the lowest in a decade, the survey noted.
It added that while the salary increases for employees with under two years of experience were just around 2 per cent, those with two to five years had their salaries cut by around 7 per cent. Those with experience between five and 10 years received an average salary rise of just five per cent and those with over 10 years' experience earned a 4 per cent salary increase.
In addition to a healthy work-life balance, job security emerged as a crucial factor in the survey. The study revealed a drastic fall in the number of people who feel their job is secure within their company.
The shrinking bench and mass layoffs by the larger players appear to have left an impact on employees. The study also said more employees are satisfied with the interest shown by their companies and their immediate seniors in helping them strike a work-life balance compared to last year.
Under such circumstances, a majority of IT employees said they changed job for better salaries and compensation (53 per cent), overseas postings (38 per cent), better job security (18 per cent), flexible working hours (18 per cent) and training and development (9 per cent).
The silver lining to the cloud was that average attrition among Indian IT services company fell to 15 per cent in 2009 from 18 per cent last year.
The average retention rate - defined as the percentage of employees retained out of the total employees this year - improved to 85 per cent from 79 per cent in 2008. The survey covered 200 IT companies of which 31 companies were shortlisted for the final round.
HCL Infosystems emerged as the best employer, followed by iGate, Rolta, RMSI and SAS Institute. HCL Infosystems also emerged as the dream company to work for, with one-third of those surveyed expressing a desire to work with the company.
RMSI and HCL Infosystems were also voted as employers of choice with over 80 per cent of their current employees wanting to continue working for the company. iGate and Rolta were at the third and fourth position, with 67 per cent and 61 per cent of the employees wanting to continue working for the companies.
