IDC-Dataquest Best Employer Survey 2006 : TCS is the best employer

Indian IT continues to script success stories in the country and abroad as well, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys charting at top on the employee gratification count.  An industry survey ranked TCS as the best employer and NASDAQ-listed Infosys as the dream company to work for as well as the top company on brand equity.

'TCS wins the race by outperforming the other 31 contenders, and Infosys remains unchallenged on brand equity and remains the company of dreams for the fifth year in continuation,' said the Best Employer Survey 2006 conducted by IDC-DQ.

While the biggies in the industry - TCS, Infosys and Wipro - are still among the top 20, giving them stiff competition are smaller ones like Cadence, RMSI and Induslogic (considering employee size), it added.

Only 70 per cent out of India's top 20 IT conglomerates last year could retain their places this year.

The survey, however, also showed some negative spots, indicating that overall employee satisfaction is decreasing.  Overall industry employee satisfaction index has dropped by about 11 per cent as compared to last year (from 77.8% in 2005 to 69.2 per cent this year).  As a result, the attrition rate of the industry has also increased by 1% from 14% last year.

'The decline in satisfaction and retention levels can be directly attributed to the steady increase in expectation levels of the employees and the inability of the employers in managing the same,' stated IDC Manager (User Research) Shailendra Gupta.

The study pointed out that growth opportunities/career development emerged as the single-largest factor driving job satisfaction.  Overall industry employee satisfaction index has dropped by about 11 per cent as compared to last year (from 77.8 in 2005 to 69.2 this year).  As a result, the attrition rate of the industry has also increased by 1% (from 14% last year to 15% this year).

Some of the other highlights of the survey are that the satisfaction index of male employees is found to be more than that of the female employees in the industry - contrary to the trend prevailed a couple of years back.

Satisfaction index ratings are increasing among the employees spending more number of years in the industry.

When comparing satisfaction across functions, software professionals are the least satisfied lot as compared to hardware professionals and marketing professionals, it said.

Work-life balance (and not just flexibility at the work place) and organisation culture continues to be areas of concern for IT companies this year.  These factors will continue to gain in importance in the future as the percentage of female employees in the industry is consistently on the rise (from 14.5 per cent in 2004 to 23.6 per cent in 2006), the survey said.

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