Sweetening the deal: How India Inc. is battling its high attrition rate

India Inc. — a slang used for the country’s formal sector — is battling the great resignation and its 21% attrition rate by offering their existing and future employees “sweet” salary negotiations, offers, and counteroffers. 

According to a report by professional services firm Aon India, companies are giving out an average of  10–20% to attract or retain talent. 

Further, the research showed that 38.8% of firms had to give up to a 10% jump on the counteroffer, while 29.8% of the companies had to dole out 20% over the counteroffer. 

In about 2-3% of the cases, companies had to increase the salary by 50% over and above the counteroffer.

Anandorup Ghose, partner at Deloitte India said, “There is a lot of money that is available in the system currently and most offers and counteroffers are a result of this.”

The workforce also has a hand in this trend. HCS Aon India Partner Roopank Chaudhary said that employees — especially at mid and senior level — “have been using offers and the resultant counter offers to better position their existing salaries to the external job market.”

In fact, 90% of employees who resigned in recent times were offered lucrative counteroffers by their existing employers, but only 35% of them stayed back.

Almost 20% of the people who get a counteroffer go back to the job-offering company and even manage to squeeze a “counter-counter” offer before joining there.

Not motivated by money alone

Industry experts are pointing out that some cases are not motivated by money alone. Deloitte’s Ghose stated that other employees are quitting due to boredom and becoming unattached to their company culture. 

Some are even looking to change industries and look for jobs where they have “little to no expertise” just to reinvigorate their working spirits. 

With this dilemma, organizations have to make sure that they are moving towards what their employees want. 

Listening to their suggestions, accommodating their needs, and helping them re-acclimate themselves in the post-pandemic world are sure-fire ways to retain and attract high-quality talents to the company.

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