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Job security replaces Esops as prime motivator for IT pros

Anjan Mitra

Stock option is no longer one of the preferred options for yesterday's fast-track IT professionals always on the lookout for a job that would mean a higher salary and compensation.

According to a yet-to-be published IDC-Dataquest survey on IT's Best Employers, almost 100 per cent respondents are not motivated by stock options and a majority are looking for job security in the aftermath of the IT slowdown.

The survey, to be published in Dataquest, also lists Infosys as the dream company with 25 per cent of all respondents and 82 per cent Infosys employees saying they would prefer to work with the Narayana Murthy-founded company if they were to choose a company as an employer.

Infosys did report the lowest attrition rate. In the last survey, only 45 per cent of Infosys employees had cited their own company as their "dream company".

One of the surprises of the survey is that Wipro, which occupied the No 3 slot in the Top 10 Employers list in a survey carried out in April, has slipped to the eighth position.

As far as Top Employers were concerned, Infosys topped the rankings, followed by Hewlett-Packard and Compaq at No 2 and No 3 positions, respectively. HCL Technologies and CTS were slotted at 4 th and 5th positions.

Infosys, which was initially trailing at a distant second spot in the survey, well behind IBM India, shot to the No 1 position as IBM India chose to stay out of the survey and declined to send in the HR questionnaire.

The survey also reveals that for most IT professionals, overseas assignments, much sought after till a year back, no longer hold much attraction.

Among other significant findings was that career development and job contentment, factors very few were concerned about till recently, figured right after job security and stability on the priority list. Compensation and benefits were a distant next.

"There's been a dramatic turnaround from the previous DQ survey just four months ago, when we had talked to software professionals. At that time, the biggest motivator by far was money. Also, foreign postings and training opportunities were very high on the priority list.

Today, with pink slips and lower increments being the norm, it is job security and stability that IT pros are most concerned about," a DQ executive said.

The survey was carried out among the 21 top IT companies in the country, shortlisted from a base of 150 companies contacted initially.

The survey was conducted in two parts among these 21 companies in seven cities -- HR responses from the companies themselves and on-campus interviews with 626 employees. While 91 per cent of the respondents were males, 55 per cent were in the age group of 25-30 years.

The survey also said employee satisfaction levels were at an all-time low. Much of this came from a significant amount of dissatisfaction with salary levels and issues like job contentment and career development.

Among all the answers on the 'job satisfaction' attributes, the only parameter where money topped the preference list was in "reasons for a job switch", and even here, it was followed closely by job content and career development, and company image and stability.

However, IDC explained this skew by clarifying that all the companies shortlisted were among the Top 20. "These are employees working in the best-known companies and they already enjoy great branding. Whenever they switch jobs, it will be laterally, to another Top 20 company, and the branding is assured automatically," IDC said.

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