With the attrition rate reaching alarming levels in India's booming sectors like information technology and telecom, human resource personnel have devised innovative ways such as over-staffing and thinking beyond higher pay packet to retain talent.

"Attrition is a crisis in India, especially in sectors such as IT, ITeS, telecom and retail that are growing at the fastest pace. Simultaneously these are the very sectors which get plagued by attrition the most," Global HR consultancy firm HayGroup's Practice Leader Mark Thompson told PTI.

Hence, HR managers are resorting to innovative ways to harness and retain talent as the market is witnessing demand-supply constraints, Thompson added.

Business process outsourcing firm Genpact, resorts to rotation of talent as a phenomenon or culture.

"GE overstaffs around 15 to 20 per cent to tackle attrition," Genpact Executive Vice President (HR) Vivek Jain said.

High attrition rate experienced by 60 per cent of BPO units are due to higher salary expectations.

Over 80 per cent of respondents from BPO firms surveyed by industry body, Assocham recently, felt attrition rates in future would rise over 40 per cent, while remaining 20 per cent were optimistic that it will drop and would stabilise between 20-25 per cent.

There should be a balance between attrition and retention of employees to ensure maximum growth of an organisation.

Nowadays a hike in salary is not the only incentive that attracts talent, Thompson said. "Companies now offer an ideal relational reward that balances work and family life. This is because salary alone cannot ensure retention and loyalty as others can match this," he added.