Attrition-hit ONGC plans to re-hire key hands

Strategy: The state-owned oil company has lost 300 senior managers in two years.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), severely hit by attrition, may be about to re-hire senior managers who have either been superannuated or had resigned to join private oil and gas companies"" some of them foreign.

Dr A K Balyan, the navratna PSU's director (human resources), says though employees who have left hesitate to write to him formally, he has received a total of a dozen re-hire requests"" including some of them in writing. ONGC, he adds, is particularly looking for trained and experienced talent in such critical areas as geosciences, drilling, production engineering and finance.

Says Balyan: "I have several requests from people who had left ONGC seven, eight or 10 years back, who want to come back and rejoin. Some of them have even served in foreign countries. So we are coming up with a scheme where we can offer a fresh career to those who who have added value to their CVs."

Balyan says attrition has been "remarkable in terms of numbers, disciplines and levels" in the last two years, adding: "It has more than doubled. We have lost about 300 people in the last two years. This is much more than normal." The departures have been mainly in critical areas such as geosciences and drilling technology.

ONGC employees have left to join both private Indian competitors as well as overseas companies, and filling up the resulting void has been a problem. "There are only two ways"" either we take people from outside the company, or we develop our own people," explains Balyan. And though induction of talent takes place mainly at the entry level, he says ONGC is also examining whether it can induct people at higher levels.

Some lateral hiring at higher levels has in fact taken place, but the numbers are still small. The problem is that the available pool of talent is very small: "In the exploration and production sector 90 per cent of the people in the country are those who have either been superannuated from ONGC, or those who have left to join other companies."

Balyan says that a compensation survey two years back (in which other oil companies were also covered) had revealed that ONGC's compensation levels were competitive up to the level of executives having 10 to 12 years experience. However, after that compensation offered by private players was far higher. The company wants exemption from public sector salary norms.

"If the government expects a high performance from us, we should be free to recruit from anywhere in the country and even from abroad. Navratnas should enjoy greater empowerment, and there should be less disparities in pay," says Balyan.