'Companies should do more than hike salary to retain talent'

Monetary compensation alone will not help a company in retaining its talent in the long run.

Companies will have to enable learning and development and build a better work environment to achieve higher retention rates, according to Nitin Sethi, senior consultant and head of south India operations (talent and organisation consulting analytics), Hewitt Associates (India) Private Limited.

Sethi was speaking at a seminar on 'Talent management and rewards' organised by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) in Hyderabad.

"There has been a continued focus on cash compensation as rewards for employees. Organisations have not been able to offer other benefits like better work environment and learning and development. Therefore, the average salary increase in India was around 14 per cent in 2005 as compared to around 7.9 per cent in China, 8.1 per cent in Phillipines and 4.2 per cent in Singapore. In 2006, it is projected to be around 13.79 per cent in India," he added.

According to Rajagopalan Raghavan, head, human resources, HSBC Global Resourcing India, the major objective with regard to talent management is to develop a pipeline of emerging talent that can aid the succession planning process.

"The talent strategy, therefore, is to target and differentiate top talent and regard them as corporate assets. For this purpose, it is important to promote the top performers into the top quartile by giving them global opportunities," Raghavan added.

While attributing due significance to the rewards structure for employee retention, Ratnesh, general manager, human resources, Satyam Computer Services Limited, said that the dilemma with rewards was whether to consider individual aspirations or corporate policy as both may not tally all the time.