Infosys slips, Wipro no where in top 20

Bangalore, Aug 28: Throwing up a lot of suprises the seventh annual Dataquest-IDC survey pushed Industry bellwether Infosys to eighth position and India's third largest software company Wipro does not figure iamong the top 20 IT employers.

According to the details of the survey, released here, the survey of 2,844 software, hardware and marketing professionals from 33 IT companies employing 304,834 people in the top seven cities threw up the Top 20 Best IT employers based on a combination of Employee Satisfaction and HR scores.

The top five ranks went to TCS, HCL Infosystems, iGate, RMSI and Synechron. The next five positions went to IBM, Capgemini, Infosys, Tavant Technologies and Sun Microsystems. Infosys had slipped from fourth position last year to eighth, the survey said.

Referring to the drop in ranks by Infosys and Wipro, the Dataquest-IDC survey pointed out that as both companies ramp up rapidly, there seemed to be tradeoff. Employees joining the organisation now might be expecting the same informal atmosphere which these companies have been known for. But the personal touch appears to have been lost in the number game. Whatever might be the case, one thing is certain, the Bangalore tigers need to get their act together, the Survey added.

India's largest company, TCS, retained its numero uno status in the BES Top 20 survey for the second year running. The challenges of scaling up were countered through innovative HR practices. With almost 15 per cent of its 90,000 employees based in foreign shores, TCS has replicated not just its programmes but also its ethos across multiple geographies, to achieve consistency in the workforce the release said.

Industry wide, Infosys remained the dream company with one tenth of the respondents choosing it as the dream company to work for. TCS came second with one in 14 respondents and IBM was at No. Three with one in 20 respondents voting for it as their dream company.

HCL Infosystems at second position retained employee satisfaction on all parameters with significant rise in satisfaction on preferred employer. HCL employees were found to be very satisfied with the growth opportunities, job security and relationship with peers. Commenting on the high points of the survey Mr. Pradeep Gupta, Publisher of CyberMedia said in the release, ''multinational IT employers IBM, Capgemini, Sun Microsystems and CSC have mastered the art of managing Indian employees to rank among the Top 20 best IT employers in the country''.

''Others, especially many India-based IT employers, will need to balance aggressive recruitment with the warmth and personal touch they used so effectively thus far, to retain people as they ramp up headcount'' he added.

The Dataquest-IDC survey pointed out that the average attrition rate was down marginally to 14 per cent from 15 per cent last year. The Top five reasons why IT professionals changed their jobs were compensation, job posting abroad, growth opportunities, job location and technology area of work.

When asked what gave them satisfaction on the job, the employees voted career development opportunities, work life balance, organisational culture, job security and technology as the five top areas. Even though compensation was the top reason for job change, it ranked at No. Seven when asked what satisfied them the most.

Among the existing employees of Infosys, only 28.2 per cent voted for it as "my dream company" in the 2007 Dataquest-IDC survey, compared to 36.6 per cent last year.

The employees of Infosys ranked their company very low on several parameters like growth opportunities, compensation and relevance of perks and benefits. Ironically, among the rest of the 2,844 employees of this industry-wide survey, those not working in Infosys, Infosys topped the votes as their dream company to work for.

Women constituted 23.7 per cent of the total staff employed by the surveyed IT companies. In the 2004 survey only 14.5 per cent of the total IT professionals were women. This percentage improved to 19.7 per cent in 2005 and 23.6 per cent in 2006.

The survey was designed and carried out in two phases. In the first phase, HR questionnaire sought information from 300 IT companies on employee strength, training days, tenure of the top managers, salary increases, revenue growth over the years and employee attrition levels. In the second phase, a large scale survey was conducted by IDC India among employees of 33 companies, across the country. The employee survey comprised a self administered questionnaire as the instrument with employees at different levels. This questionnaire included 53 statements to capture their views on broad parameters like composite satisfaction, company culture, job content/growth, training, salary and compensation, appraisal system and people. The employees were also asked about their salary structure and preferred company in the industry. UNI