ISSN: 2249-7196 IJMRR/July 2015/ Volume 5/Issue 7/Article No-4/528-534 A.Astalin Melba et. al., / International Journal of Management Research & Review A STUDY ON WOMEN EMPLOYEE ATTRITION IN IT INDUSTRY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TECHNOPARK, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Dr.R.Mohan Kumar 1, A.Astalin Melba* 2 1 Professor and Head, Dept of Management Studies, Sri Krishna Engineering College, Pannapakkam, Chennai, India. 2 Asst. Prof, Dept. of Managment Studies, Maria College of Engineering & Technology, Attoor, Kanyakumari District, TamilNadu, India. ABSTRACT Women employee attrition in IT industry is high nowadays. This article is to find the level of job satisfaction, safety measures, retaining the employees, working conditions & work life balance and the reason for women Employees attrition in IT Industries. The women employee attrition springs up as a vital issue in IT businesses. The researcher had taken 523 respondents as their sample size from universe and descriptive research design was adopted. This research study uses various methods to analyze the reasons and causes for women employee attrition in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. The samples were collected through questionnaire with open ended questions. The tools used for analysing the data are Factor analysis. Based on the analysis and interpretation, it is inferred that the IT companies in Technopark has to implement the Retention strategies by compensation Policies, Changes in work Requirements & improvement in working conditions to sustain in the organisation. Keywords: Level of job satisfaction, safety measures, Driving forces, Retaining the employees, work life balance. 1. INTRODUCTION Attrition can be defined as "A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death and also we can say it as The rate of shrinkage in size or number". The problem taken for this study is Attrition in IT Industry among the women employees of Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. In India the software and Information Technology are the fastest growing industries. Today, attrition is one of the major problems faced by the HR managers of the IT industry across the globe; the impact of attrition has received considerable attention by management and HR professionals. The IT industry witnessed an average attrition of 17-25 per cent in FY12 while the average attrition across sectors-manufacturing, banking and others-was at about eight per cent. The software industry clocked one of its highest attrition rates in FY11 (Rajesh Kurup, May 2012). Women Employee Attrition is one of the most critical problems which Indian IT industry faces today. Since IT industries are the economic backbone on providing much needed *Corresponding Author www.ijmrr.com 528
foreign currency inflow to our country, it is the need of the time to improve the level of satisfaction among the women IT employees Married women employees who are working in the night shift face many problems from family, society and even health problem and there is no safety for women an employee working in night shift. The women s has to get more support from the society and family members to work and to become more dynamic in the society (Dr. Lakshmipathi. C.G 2014).Time to time, employee surveys are done to figure out what makes employees to love or hate their employer. Based on these surveys, IT companies those who want to retain their women employees take appropriate steps with hope of reducing the attrition. Career development is a key retention driver, culture in addition to compensation keeps people engaged at the lower levels (Rajeswari Sharma, 2012). Providing salary hikes in accordance with industrial standards and recruiting the women those who has long-term orientation towards the organization will reduce the level of attrition (Pooja Wadhwa Saroj Koul, 2012). This is an interesting fact that some companies are inherently immune to attrition, whereas some companies fail to control attrition despite desperate efforts. It is the most costly and seemingly intractable human resource challenges confronting organizations. Women attrition (or turnover) represents significant costs to most organizations. It is odd, therefore, that many organizations neither measure such costs nor have targets or plans to reduce them. With focus on recruitment, compensation, training & development, supervision and motivation, the research will point out the extent of women employee attrition and its causes in an organization, especially in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. The response from the employees will give a true picture of Attrition. Analyzing the respondents answers will help in understanding problems from the employees view thus will help to develop the current system and making it more effective. 2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The quality of work life provides a boost to women employees job satisfaction. The basic nature of the work, the freedom at work and could help the employees in being closely associated with the work. The physical environment of work life, enough safety, healthy and working conditions place a true picture in workers instigation of work. A safe and health working condition and better welfare measures are undoubtedly necessary for a fireless and satisfied work performance. Supervisors are the nearer boss to the workers and a good relationship between them is imperative. 3. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY To find out the driving forces of women attrition in the IT companies in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram To identify the organizational push and pull factors which causes women attrition in Technopark To study the various effective retention strategies formulated for retaining women employees in IT companies Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 529
4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The quality of work life denotes all the organizational inputs, which aim at the women employee's safety, healthy and working conditions and enhancing organizational effectiveness. This gives more importance on advance technology and high productivity surpassing the needs and mental states of its employees. This created a negative impact on the working environment among the employees. Thus it was realized that communal support goes hand in hand with technical improvements. 5. METHODS AND MATERIALS Research methodology is a way to systematically solve the research problems. It includes the overall research design, the sampling procedure, data collection method and analysis procedure. In this study Empirical Research Design is used to identify the Employee Attrition among the women employees working in Technopark, The structured questionnaire for finding women employees attrition were open ended, multiple choice, ranking questions are the types of questions used. The nature of the data is both Primary and Secondary data. The data s are collected from internet, books and discussion with the women employees. The primary data are collected through questionnaire and direct personal interviews. The secondary data has been collected through oral communication with the employees, Books and company website. Since the population is hypothetical, the researcher applied simple random sampling method to collect the data. The sample size is 523. The tool used for analysing the data is Factor analysis followed by correlation. Factor analysis is a multivariate statistical technique used to condense and simplify the set of large number of variables to smaller number of variables called factors. The correlation is the study of finding the relationship between the variables. If there are only 2 variables in the study of correlations there it is called simple correlation otherwise the study in either partial or multiple correlation. In this study the simple inter-correlations analysis is performed between the selected variables and the results are presented in the form of correlation matrix. Further the significance of correlation was tested at the 1% level of significance. A pilot study was conducted by collecting data from 50 women employees working at Technopark using a well structured questionnaire. Reliability analysis was used to determine the extent to which the items in the questionnaire are related to each other, to get an overall index of the repeatability or internal consistency of the scale as a whole, and to identify problem items that should be excluded from the scale. To check the reliability of the questionnaire alpha analysis was used. In this the number items are 78 and the alpha value is 0.907(i.e. 90.7%).Since the reliability is 90.7%, it is concluded that the data are more reliable for the study. Tools used for analyse the data are Factor analysis. Researcher used Factor analysis and followed by correlation and also checked KMO (Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin) factor followed by correlation. The fixed hypothesis states that there is no significance relationship between the safety/healthy/working condition variables. Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 530
6. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY Respondents in equal importance from all companies in Technopark with respect to the number of workers in each department cannot be taken due to the non availability, willingness and free time of the skilled workers. Only few determinants of safety, healthy working conditions are taken for the research analysis. 7. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE STUDY 7.1 Level of perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions Here the variables are, Work environment was safe & comfortable (A1), Job orientation is effective (A2), Continuous pressure to achieve targets (A3), The infrastructure facilities are good (A4), Well organized duties and responsibilities (A5), Workload is reasonable (A6) The work atmosphere is favourable (A7), The management was available to discuss job related issues (A8),Sufficient resources were available (A9), Encourages open communication at workplace (A10), Proper utilization of employees skill & knowledge (A11), Fair & equal treatment of employees (A12), Welcomed suggestions & encouraged feedback (A13), Maintain consistent policies & procedures (A14), Encourage cooperation / collegiality (A15) are taken in account to analyse by using Factor analysis and correlation study. 7.1.1 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy The significance (0.00) is less than the assumed value (0.05) & KMO coefficient = 0.917. This implies that the factor analysis is valid. Table 1: Rotated Factor Loadings for the level of perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions Perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions F1 F2 F3 Communality A1 0.757 0.296 0.030.662 A2 0.795 0.324 0.074.742 A3 0.519 0.154 0.460.505 A4 0.921 0.155 0.076.877 A5 0.123 0.113-0.847.745 A6 0.897-0.005 0.049.808 A7 0.862 0.122 0.075.763 A8 0.467 0.404 0.459 0.591 A9 0.731 0.327-0.188 0.677 A10 0.727 0.400 0.009 0.689 A11 0.564 0.631-0.100 0.726 A12 0.515 0.588-0.098 0.621 A13 0.540 0.636-0.079 0.702 A14 0.087 0.765-0.080 0.600 A15 0.026 0.690 0.306 0.571 Eigen value 7.56 1.44 1.29 % of var. explained 50.38 9.58 8.57 68.53 Cum. % explained 50.38 59.96 68.53 Table 1 gives the rotated factor loadings, communalities, Eigen values and the percentage of variance explained by the factors. Out of the 15 variables associated with the level of Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 531
perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions of women employees, 3 factors have been extracted and these 3 factors put together explain the total variance of these variables to the extent of 68.53%. In order to reduce the number of factors and enhance the interpretability, the factors are rotated. The rotation increases the quality of interpretation of the factors. There are several methods of the initial factor matrix to attain simple structure of the data. The varimax rotation is one such method to obtain better result for interpretation is employed and the results are given in Table 2. Table 2: Clustering of level of perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions Factors Level of perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions Rotated factor loadings A1 0.757 A2 0.795 A3 0.519 A4 0.921 Factor I (50.38%) A5 0.123 A6 0.897 A7 0.862 A8 0.467 A9 0.731 A10 0.727 A11 0.631 Factor II (9.58%) A12 0.588 A13 0.636 A14 0.765 Factor III (8.57%) A15 0.690 Three factors were identified as being maximum percentage variance accounted. The ten perception variables A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9 and A10 were grouped together as factor I and accounts 50.38% of the total variance. The four perception variables A11, A12, A13 and A14 constituted the factor II and accounts 9.58% of the total variance. The only one perception variable A15 constituted the factor III and accounts 8.57% of the total variance. The ten perception variables Work environment was safe & comfortable (A1), Job orientation is effective (A2), Continuous pressure to achieve targets (A3), Infrastructure facilities are good (A4), Well organized duties and responsibilities (A5), Workload is reasonable (A6), Work atmosphere is favourable (A7), Management was available to discuss job related issues (A8), Sufficient resources were available (A9) and Encourages open communication at workplace (A10) were grouped together as factor I and accounts 50.38% of the total variance. 7.1.2 Correlation analysis In this section the results of inter-correlation analysis between the perceptions on work environment variables based on the first factor are presented through correlation matrix. The results of the inter-correlation analysis with its significance are presented in the form of correlation matrix. The Table 3 describes the results of inter-correlation analysis in terms of correlation coefficient & its significance at 1% and 5% level of significance. Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 532
Table 3: Correlation Matrix-Perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions variables basis of the factor I Perception on safety/ healthy/ and working conditions variables A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 A1 1 0.708 ** 0.385 ** 0.724 ** 0.101 * 0.648 ** 0.668 ** 0.464 ** 0.580 ** 0.635 ** A2 1 0.468 ** 0.782 ** 0.080 0.690 ** 0.692 ** 0.517 ** 0.615 ** 0.612 ** A3 1 0.518 ** -0.125 ** 0.404 ** 0.474 ** 0.394 ** 0.318 ** 0.423 ** A4 1 0.08 0.842 ** 0.799 ** 0.516 ** 0.723 ** 0.688 ** A5 1 0.060 0.070-0.177 ** 00.171 ** 0.095 * A6 1 0.749 ** 0.431 ** 0.617 ** 0.618 ** A7 1 0.443 ** 0.599 ** 0.706 ** A8 1 0.336 ** 0.439 ** A9 1 0.669 ** A10 1 **Significant at 1% level of significance and *Significant at 5% level of significance It is found from the Table 3 that the entire variables of perception on safety/healthy/and working conditions on the basis of factor I considered have significant inter-correlation except three cases. It is prepared that the perception variables such as Work environment was safe & comfortable (A1), Job orientation is effective (A2), Continuous pressure to achieve targets (A3), Infrastructure facilities are good (A4), Well organized duties and responsibilities (A5), Workload is reasonable (A6), Work atmosphere is favourable (A7), Management was available to discuss job related issues (A8), Sufficient resources were available (A9) and Encourages open communication at workplace (A10) have significant interrelationship between them. 8. CONCLUSION Women Attrition is an issue that can be found is many IT companies today, but escaping this issue is not a concept that is unattainable. From research, and as reflected in this paper, Attrition can be drastically reduced by simply gaining the commitment and dedication from employees. It can be done only by providing satisfactory job. The employer can retain the women employees by providing safety and secured job, good working conditions, reasonable workload, favorable work environment, positive interpersonal relationship etc. In order for companies to stray away from the horrible effects of turnover, it is best that they develop prevention methods such an in dept hiring/selection process or exit interviews, that allow them to sustain employees. When Attrition is suspected within an organization, an accurate measure of past and existing Attrition must be analyzed. Once both of these issues have been studied, companies can decide on the proper solutions according to their analyses, the ultimate one being the attainment of employee loyalty and commitment. REFERENCES [1] Aswathappa. Human Resources and Personnel Management, TATA McGraw Hill, 2003. [2] Chandramohan A, Vasnthikumari K. Attrition: A Predicament for ITES in India. Journal of Management Matters 2006; 1(6): 25-31. Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 533
[3] Deepa, Stella. Employee Turnover In IT Industry With Special Reference To Chennai City-An Exploratory Study. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 2012; 2(7). [4] Kothari CR. Research Methodology, Reprint Edition, 2004. [5] Narmadha K. Indian ITES Industry and Employee Attrition an Overview, 2014. [6] Wadhwa P, Koul S. Critical Factors Affecting Retention: Case of the Indian IT Industry, 2012. [7] Kurup R. Attrition dips in IT sector in FY12 following employee retention programmes. India Today-May 7, 2012. [8] Sharma R. Employee retention- Measures and Strategies, 2012. [9] The economic times- Jan 31, 2011. Employee retention a key challenge for IT, BPO companies: Expert PTI Jan 31, 2011, [10] Tseng CY, Wallace M. Retention of software employees in the IT industry in Taiwan, 2009. [11] www.technopark.org [12] www.nasscom.in Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 534