A not-so-best practice

There was a time when IT professionals were viewed as bonded labour as there were some industry practices which were quite prominent during the 90’s. TCS had this concept of bonds for employees who quit within a certain period. Although it was a hotly debated topic in the 90’s, it lost steam as people realized that TCS can’t really enforce the bond. I’m not sure whether TCS has done away with this bond concept. With the entry of lot of MNC’s, attrition levels seem to be quite high in the Indian IT companies. The homegrown IT companies seem to be imparting few months classroom training for fresh engineering grads and hence they might want to ensure that the money spent on training a new hire should be recovered within a certain period. With this in mind, IT Major Wipro has come out with a deposit criterion for new hires.

One of the leading IT companies, Wipro, has evolved the process of conducting campus recruits for a conditional pay of Rs 75,000 as deposit before joining the firm as project engineers. The deposit, which will be repaid with four percent interest at the end of 15 months, should be paid by the selected candidates through a demand draft. Those, who shift jobs prior the stipulated period, would forfeit the amount.

These kind of practices are unlikely to help in building goodwill among the prospective employees. If an employee is determind to quit, he will find a new employer who is ready to foot the bill of this deposit amount. These kind of practices might put off the prospective employees. I already hear that engineering grads are shunning some of the IT majors because of the low entry-level salaries at these places. I’m sure the popularity levels of these IT firms will take a further dip after these developments.