With the attrition rate reaching alarming levels, India’s premier defence research organisation Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will now rope in foreign experts to devise ways to retain top scientists engaged in strategic programmes.
DRDO’s Recruitment and Assessment Centre (RAC), responsible for recruiting scientists, has invited human resource experts from the US, Britain, Germany, Australia and Israel to understand how these countries are managing to retain bright talents for their scientific programmes.
The initiative comes at a time when many strategic and futuristic programmes of DRDO are getting delayed because of manpower crunch and failure of the organisation to attract top brains.
“High rate of attrition is a serious problem affecting our strategic programmes and that is why we have invited foreign experts to guide us in attracting and retaining top talents,” Director of RAC, Arun Kumar, said.
DRDO recruits about 1,000 scientists every year across all its 52 laboratories and the high attrition rate, which is around 8 per cent, has become a key factor affecting its growth.
The urgency is reflected from RAC’s move to organise a four-day workshop beginning September 17, probably first type of such workshop in India, where foreign experts as well as HR managers from Infosys, Wipro, Tata, Isro, CSIR and the Department of Atomic Energy will share their experience with DRDO on various aspects of manpower management.
“These developed countries are known for their successful scientific and strategic programmes and we hope their inputs would help us in developing a wide array of tools to stem the flow of scientists to greener pastures,” Kumar said.
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“We will have to develop innovative ways to retain our talent as we are facing a steady outflow of scientists, which is affecting various programmes,” Kumar said, adding the flight is taking place from all the DRDO laboratories across the country.
The government has approved a 21 per cent raise in salaries of defence employees on the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission this month.
However, the general feeling in the DRDO community is that the raise was too little and it would not help stem the exodus.
“The Sixth Pay Commission has offered something. But it is not up to our satisfaction,” a source in DRDO said.
Admitting that the high attrition rate was a major concern, DRDO Chief M Natarajan recently mooted the idea of allowing the scientists to work for a specific period in the private sector.
Kumar, who made significant contributions in developing missile systems, said DRDO had also failed to attract top brains from IITs, IIMs and other premier institutions and in-depth discussions on how to attract young talents to DRDO would take place in the workshop.
“The workshop on ‘Emerging Frameworks and Issues for Science and Technology Recruitment’ is designed to cover several important issues of pre- and post-recruitment processes which go beyond general methodologies of selection procedures,” Kumar said.
Asked whether it was seeking help from human resource experts from NASA, Kumar said those responsible for recruiting talents for the American space agency have been invited.
Kumar said Michael A McDanniel from Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, Brett Myors from Australia’s Gravatt University and many other experts from Israel and the UK have confirmed their participation.
Kumar said DRDO was open to forging collaboration with research institutions of these countries to reshape the framework of recruitment processes for Indian research organisations.
RAC, which was set up on 23 July 1985, undertakes various recruitment programmes to induct scientists in a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines relevant to DRDO laboratories.
In order to commemorate its role in critical defence technologies for the last five decades and turning India into a self-reliant nation, DRDO is observing the year 2008 as its golden jubilee year.