Indian IT industry hit by ‘Great Resignation’

Hyderabad: If the Great Depression and Great Recession changed the world in many ways, the pandemic has given way to a new term in the IT sector — Great Resignation. Whether it is for higher salaries, work-from-home opportunities, or career progression, IT employees have been shifting jobs more than usual in the post-pandemic world. Although, […]

Hyderabad: If the Great Depression and Great Recession changed the world in many ways, the pandemic has given way to a new term in the IT sector — Great Resignation. Whether it is for higher salaries, work-from-home opportunities, or career progression, IT employees have been shifting jobs more than usual in the post-pandemic world.

Although, as per reports, this concept was coined in the United States in 2020-21 with many leaving jobs for better prospects, the Indian IT industry in the last two year has also been impacted by it.

Many large IT companies like Wipro, Infosys, and TCS have reported high attrition rates for the financial year 2021-22 with TCS and Infosys reporting 15.3 per cent and 25.5 per cent respectively in the third quarter and Wipro reporting 22.7 per cent in the second quarter. If this is the situation in bigger giants, then smaller companies are also not left behind with many facing attrition even as employees are looking for better prospects in terms of job profile and salaries.

“When the market is good then the attrition is always higher. With so much demand, this spurt in attrition is bound to happen and this kind of attrition of an average of 20 per cent was witnessed in 2011 and now after almost a decade we are seeing this rate,” says Bharani K Aroll, president, Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (Hysea) and adds that this is a temporary phenomenon and claims that this will settle down in the next two quarters.

Some of the major causes for the Great Resignation in the IT sector include better compensation which leads to lateral shifts irrespective of the size of the company, offer for flexible working hours, employees finding positions locally in their place of stay, career progression wherein employees get to work on the latest technology, and lastly upskilled employees looking for new prospects.

“We are witnessing an average of 50 per cent of the employee base either resigning or relocating and many companies are forced to manage with just one-fourth of the employees even as the number of projects is growing. The IT industry is facing a talent crunch with the need for talent has almost doubled in the past two years,” says Lakshmi M Kodali, founder and CEO, OptimHire.