Unconditional training key to employee retention--Accenture
By Erika Tapalla
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 11:06:00 06/17/2008
Filed Under: Economy, Business & Finance
MAKATI City, Philippines -- With the problem of brain drain hounding the local technology industry, management consulting firm Accenture believes proper training and providing a good working environment for its employees would stave off professional poachers and increase chances of personnel retention.
Winston Cruz, Senior Executive of Systems Integration and Technology at Accenture, said keeping employees happy with further training keeps turnover rates low and drives away professional poachers.
“We provide this (training) to the people for them to recognize its value. They sign up for it, and we support them. There is no bond associated with it. By providing them with innovative training programs and job experiences that they truly enjoy, we hope that this would be a great motivator for them to stay,” said Cruz in an interview with INQUIRER.net.
Collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professional Education Programs (MIT-PEP) for two global certifications that focus on how their employees design, deliver and manage systems for their clients, Cruz hopes that this voluntary certification program would motivate local employees to stay in the company.
“In a multipolar world, there is no question that there is great demand for talent,” said Eric Buhrfeind, HR Director for Accenture Technology Solutions. “The demand is white-hot in the Philippines and in Latin America. If we’re going to be the best in attracting and retaining people, we should give them training.”
Buhrfeind and Cruz say Accenture employees are not bound in their contracts to stay with the company after being given training, and that the training is given unconditionally. Conversely, however, further training does not become a basis for promotion.
“There is no bond or service agreement in their contracts, but at the same time the training is not a basis for performance gains or salary increases,” Buhrfeind said.
The Accenture training is comprised of two voluntary and distinct certifications: the first one for application developers and the second for application designers. Each takes 18 to 24 months to finish. The training is composed of online tutorials, real-world classroom sessions, online video lectures, on-the-job training and other global means of deploying education.
As of May 15, 2008 on a global scale, there were 15,997 enrolled employees in the Accenture Solutions Delivery Academy Program (ASDA), and from this, there were 1,918 Filipinos enrolled.
In a separate interview, Philippine Software Industry Association Inc. president Beng Coronel acknowledged the problem of poaching in the country.
"While we abhor the poaching of people, we're also trying to encourage compliance to the mandatory 30-day notice. This should be followed. Losing people is bad enough, but losing accounts and projects is worse," she said.
A study done in 2006 by PSIA showed that the current average attrition rate in local software companies was about 12.5 percent.
"This is the rate of people we’re losing to another country or another local company," she added.
Over the years, she believes that the attrition rate in local companies has remained the same. What changed were the countries recruiting local software engineers, Coronel said. She pointed out that Filipino software engineers are now migrating to Singapore and Malaysia. In the past, it was the United States, Australia and the Middle East.
“At the end of the day, people will come and go, but we try to give them the best place to work in and chances are this will prevent them from moving to other companies,” Accenture’s Buhrfeind says.
With a report from Erwin Oliva
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