Summary –

Managing growth: Human resource management challenges facing the Indian software industry

Submitted by Group 5
Kanupriya – PGP10023
Pratik – PGP10039
Kanika – PGP10209
Chirag – PGP10244

Abstract:
As we know, the Indian software industry has had phenomenal growth in the last two decades and is expected to
sustain this momentum in the foreseeable future. This paper discusses the Human Resource Management
challenges along with a model for managing growth considering various aspects of the study.

As per the study, we can conclude the significant findings in the following manner: -

 High turnover of IT professionals

o As the IT professionals were not inclined to work for long term projects of similar nature due to lack
of growth and learning opportunities & round the clock requirements, employees used to learn
whatever they wanted to know and leave the project
o With the increasing growth of the industry along with lack of opportunities to work in new domains
& technology, high work pressure & reluctance of leaders to invest development of their team
members have also contributed heavily in attrition in software firms

 Problems arising from an onsite-offshore delivery model

o Onsite members being close to customers often the customers tend to credit the onsite team, which
leads to customer asking for the same set of people who have done good work with their previous
projects and hence, it reduces the possibilities of offshore team members to go onsite and reinforces
the sense of inequity as perceived by offshore team

 Lack of technical & interpersonal skills in team leaders & team members
o As a Software development team needs to have not only technical knowledge & domain expertise
but also should possess project management skills & customer management skills
o As the offshore team members lacked communication skills, it was difficult for them to face the
customers directly, adding to which lack of confidence about technology also faced challenges in
communicating with onsite team members
o This, in turn, raised an interesting question of what competencies are essential for the role of a
Project Leader in a Software Project

 Routine & monotonous nature of work

o As per software professional s, it was perceived that a typical maintenance project does not provide
enough learning opportunities and hence, they never used to consider it as a challenging task
o Young software professionals were always requested to work on a different project from time to
time within the organization or move to another organization at the earliest opportunity

 Inadequate HR systems & processes

o With the shortage of workforce managers often hold on to the existing available workforce without
being concerned about their growth aspiration with this, managers used to agree to the expressed
expectations of the fresh recruit at the time of selection but weren’t able to fulfill due to various
reasons hence, it led to frustrations & breakdown of psychological contract
 o The case also mentions that the business managers did not respect HR systems & processes, which
made the task of HR professionals more challenging and complex
o As the business managers were highly preoccupied with business challenges they, seem to be
reluctant to invest time & effort to institutionalize HR systems & processes
o Overall this resulted in a lack of significant job rotation, career & succession planning coaching &
mentoring, development of leadership & management skills, & lack of matured recruitment
processes

 Poor transition from technical to managerial roles

o It seemed that young software professionals promoted as leaders feel that performing leadership
functions such as attending customer meetings & preparing PowerPoint presentations are a waste of
time
o Even the Project Managers do not like to spend time on making customer calls as these calls have to
be completed late in the day, requiring them to stay back in the office

 Other Issues
o Estimation of time for projects
 With Estimation of delivery time being a highly challenging & unpredictable task, Project
managers tend to agree with unrealistic time estimates, which become a point of conflict
between Project Managers and his/her team
o Contract employees
 As contract employees tend to keep looking for permanent employment, it leads to a higher
attrition rate
 software employees who continue to work as contract employees are the ones who might
not be able to get permanent jobs due to lack of knowledge and learning abilities and hence,
it will require a much higher level of supervision, creating extra workload on team leaders
and project leaders
o Over promises and breaking of psychological contract
 As explained before, managers make promises to meet urgent project needs without
thinking through the implications of not meeting them
 This not only breaks up the psychological contract but also increases the pain, anger &
frustration of the employees
o Work-life imbalance
 Unrealistic project delivery dates due to demanding customers tend to overload IT
professionals causing them to experience work-life imbalance

Hence, we can conclude that all these significant reasons will lead to High Attrition, Perception of lack of distributive
and procedural justice, Sense of boredom, apathy & burn out, Project delivery getting delayed, & lack of work-life
balance.