Gartner says the rules of technology staffing are changing radically. Against this background, staffing trends and social responsibility were on the agenda as I took a client to various large Indian firms last week. And I expected to hear typical, traditional answers.
Instead I heard from one : "The majority of our revenues come from outside India; a significant portion of our investors are non-Indian funds, we should strive to have at least a third of our employees to be non-Indian". In a lot of ways the Indian services firms have broken gender and tribal barriers that plague that country. But while talking about "global delivery", it really has been about India delivery.
I also was pleased to see firms like Satyam report a steep decline in staff attrition rates. What gets measured gets managed. Couple of years ago I would hear excuses like "but the rest of the industry has 30% attrition - we are at least better"
The trip also confirmed that the average staff age of most Indian firms is around 27 years, and is declining as campus recruitment accelerates. My concerns, laid out in my "Day Care" post, have not hit home yet.
But, maybe the firms can get a "two-fer". As they expand staff overseas, try and hire more gray hair...as Gartner says, the old rules of staffing are, well...old.
