Information Technology & People

The contribution of a global service provider's Human Resources Information System

(HRIS) to staff retention in emerging markets: Comparing issues and implications in six
developing countries
Erik Beulen
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Erik Beulen, (2009),"The contribution of a global service provider's Human Resources Information System
(HRIS) to staff retention in emerging markets", Information Technology & People, Vol. 22 Iss 3 pp. 270 - 288
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ITP
22,3
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Received 1 July 2008
Revised 10 July 2008
Accepted 22 April 2009
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Information Technology & People
Vol. 22 No. 3, 2009
pp. 270-288
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-3845
DOI 10.1108/09593840910981446
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-3845.htm
The contribution of a global service
provider’s Human Resources
Information System (HRIS) to staff
retention in emerging markets
Comparing issues and implications in six
developing countries
Erik Beulen
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, and
Accenture, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the contribution of a global IT service provider’s
Human Resources Information System (HRIS) to staff retention in emerging markets. This includes a
comparison of the relevant issues and implications derived from a study investigating six developing
countries. The author of this paper concludes that the functionality of global HR systems should be
supplemented with local adaptions in order to achieve the best support for staff retention management.
Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical framework for this paper is based on HR
literature concerning staff retention and on the framework proposed by Martinsons for human
resources management applications of knowledge-based systems. The argument is illustrated by
quotes from 16 semi-structured expert interviews with Accenture HR executives and managers in
Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Latvia and Slovakia.
Findings – HRISs contribute positively to staff retention for global IT service providers in emerging
markets. Especially important in minimizing turnover is the support they can provide for the
allocation of employees to international engagements, including scheduling and training. Culture and
local labor market differences do of course influence the HR functionalities needed. This paper
provides insight into the factors that necessitate local adaptions to a global HRIS.
Originality/value – This paper addresses the differences and similarities in a global IT service
provider’s staff retention management and the contribution of its HRIS – including global
functionality and local adaptions – towards this goal in six developing countries.
Keywords Communication technologies, Human resource management, Outsourcing, Retention,
Employees
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Many global IT service providers experience staff turnover to such a degree that it
significantly impacts on their business. In order to control such attrition global IT
service providers use Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). Service
providers who implement an HRIS face several choices, for instance: must it be
centralized at the organization’s global headquarters or supplemented by local
adaptions? This is an important question, since staff turnover in the IT service
provisioning business is closely related to the globalization that shapes the context of
this industry as well as that of others. Globalization has increased labor shortages
 worldwide (Worldbank, 2007). This holds for IT professionals too (Carmel and Tjia, Human resources
2005; Beulen et al., 2006; Thomson, 2006), a result of the autonomous increase of the
global demand for IT services. IT service providers have been growing powerfully.
information
Gartner expects worldwide IT outsourcing spending to grow from US$ 225 billion in system
2006 to US$328 billion in 2011, reflecting a five-year compound annual growth rate of
7.8 percent (Hale and Potter, 2007). IDC predicts that the worldwide offshore IT
services market will grow from US$17.2 billion in 2006 to US$37.8 billion in 2011, a 271
five-year compound annual growth rate of 17.1 percent (Tapper et al., 2007). This
increasing global demand for offshore IT services has resulted in a “war for talent”.
Therefore staff retention is of key importance (Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001; Fisher et al.,
2005; Landberg, 2006; Luftman and Kempaiah, 2007; Robertson, 2007). Of course, staff
turnover is not only a negative phenomenon. Regular changes keep people and
positions available and ensure a good fit between the tasks at hand and the employees’
qualifications (Schneider, 1987). But in the current market circumstances too much
turnover would endanger the continuity of the services delivered. This is why it is
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important to limit it by focusing on staff retention.

Another aspect of globalization is that the importance of the BRIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India and China) in IT services provisioning is growing (IDC, 2007). Other
Asian, East European and South American countries are emerging and maturing as
well (Overby, 2006).
This paper is structured as follows. First, we look into staff retention: the factors
that determine whether staff is retained and the strategies companies may employ to
do so. Then a definition is presented: what exactly is an HRIS? In the next section, the
research question and methodology are elaborated, and the case study used to answer
the research questions is described. Following that, its results are presented and then,
in the next section, discussed. Finally, the HRIS functionalities that are important to
staff retention are summed up, after which the paper’s conclusions are given.

Staff retention
Studies into staff retention carried out for the US government have shown that
remuneration is one of the reasons for IT professionals to leave their employer – but
not their most important reason (DeMers, 2002; Ressler, 2006). Luftman and Kempaiah
(2007) have found that the same proves to be true for private companies, although they
have also pointed out the fact that in the for-profit world counter-offers are often made
to IT professionals who are considering a move, in order to keep them. But generally,
many motives other than money play a role in IT professionals’ considerations:
interesting assignments, growth perspectives, inspiring managers, training and
development opportunities, well-equipped work locations and flexible working hours,
and the chance to work with the newest technologies (DeMers, 2002; Hayes, 2005;
McGee, 2006; Tarasco and Damato, 2006; Luftman and Kempaiah, 2007).
HR staff have only limited power over employee turnover. They cannot change or
turn back termination decisions taken by individual employees (Baysinger and
Mobley, 1983). Nevertheless, Kerr and Slocum (1987) and Kopelman et al. (1990) claim
that HR managers can influence staff retention indirectly by letting organizational
culture values do their work on the company’s HR strategy, including selection and
placement policies, promotion and development procedures, and reward systems.
Gelade and Ivery (2003) have elaborated on the relation between HR management,
work climate and organizational performance. And while these researchers admit there
are no clear correlations between these variables, HR staff do have the responsibility to
 ITP develop and implement a strategy that aims to minimize turnover and recruitment
costs (Abelson and Baysinger, 1984; Boudreau and Berger, 1985). The implementation
22,3 of such a strategy can well be supported by information technology in the shape of an
HRIS.
Globalization has made skilled IT professionals more mobile. This not only means
that non-Westerners will easily move to the West; they may easily return home too.
272 Especially IT professionals from India tend to return to their home country (Bose,
2006). Among other things, such trends complicate the challenge of staff retention. A
study carried out by Stephan and Levin (2005), for example, shows that gender
differences apply in the IT branch too: women leaving their company often do not
move to another company but stop working altogether. Marriage and family life play
different roles for women and men, which affects retention. These complexities mean
that more is needed than a short-term action plan if one intends to retain one’s IT
professionals. Retention management will have to be anchored in the company’s HR
strategy (Lado and Wison, 1994; Huselid et al., 1997; Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001). One
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possible supporting tool is a HRIS (Hussain et al. 2006; Lepak et al., 2007; Sanchez and
Aguayo, 2007). The key element in the support an HRIS provides for the company’s HR
strategy is the availability of information as input for HR-relating decision making
processes. It allows, for example, information to be shared on the roles that are
available for IT professionals, so that the match can be improved between their jobs
and their knowledge, experience and aspirations. In addition, employers should
provide challenging tasks for their IT professionals, rotate assignments and provide
opportunities to work abroad for 24- or 36-month periods. Their HR policies should be
caring, involving their employees’ families. And salaries and related packages should
regularly be updated with the cost of living (Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001; Carmel and
Tjia, 2005; Roehling et al., 2005; Tarasco and Damato, 2006; Lacity and Rottman, 2008).
According to one Indian HR executive, salary is not the solution to retain employees.
In this type of demand market, people connecting to people is the key. Personally, I believe
that at the end of the day people work for people. They don’t work for Accenture or IBM. It is
the people around them that are important. They work for their manager, their colleagues.
They interact with them every day and to them they are the ones who represent Accenture -
not the company’s top managers. The employee’s direct environment is important, because
these people have a direct influence on them. You must have a good management connection
with your people. That helps. So we have programs to connect to our staff: Town Hall
meetings, project meetings. Some are off-site. This type of thing helps retain your staff. You
have to understand the aspirations of the people, apart from the money.
In this paper we will focus on the contribution of HRISs to staff retention. Service
providers can use an HRIS to make their HR processes more effective and more
efficient. An HRIS can also help improve the way HR officers are provided with the
information they need. Thus, HRISs can contribute significantly to the control of staff
attrition.

Human resource information systems

More and more companies use an HRIS, to actively support both their HR management
and their business management (Shrivastava and Shaw, 2004; Hussain et al., 2006;
Lepak et al., 2007). An HRIS may be defined as “the system used to acquire, store,
manipulate, analyze, retrieve and distribute pertinent information regarding an
organization’s human resources” (Tannenbaum, 1990, p. 27). Such systems have
 always been around, of course. But since the 1940s, when they consisted of personnel Human resources
administration and payroll activities run on sorting and tabulating equipment, they
have been extended and modernized almost beyond recognition. The 1960s saw the
information
introduction of computers in HR departments, albeit on a very small scale and with system
limited functionality (DeSanctis, 1986). In the late 1970s Hennessey reported that the
increase in complexity due to globalizing companies, changing legal environments and
the growing percentage of white-collar workers created an increasing demand for 273
HRISs with functionalities that would provide the company’s business managers with
management reports giving them HR information relevant to their needs (Hennessey,
1979). In the mid-1980s, DeSanctis(1986, p. 15) concluded that “Human Resource
Information Systems (HRIS) have become a major MIS sub-function within the
personnel areas of many large corporations”.
HRIS functionality nowadays includes corporate communication, recruitment,
selection, training, employee opinion survey, compensation, payroll services and
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employee verification as well as general information (Ngai and Wat, 2006). Holincheck
et al. (2007) distinguish between administrative applications, talent management
applications, workforce management applications, service delivery applications and
workforce analysis and/or decision support applications. This means a shift has been
made from labor-intensive HRM to technology-intensive HRM (Florkowski and
Olivas-Luján, 2006), a transformation that has been all but simple. Kovach et al. (2002,
p. 46) consider “getting the staff to adopt and adapt to a new system, which is actually
a new business process for them” to be the most important difficulty when an HRIS is
implemented. Nevertheless they conclude that HRISs are the only way to achieve both
administrative and strategic advantages.
However, do HRISs also provide the solution to the retention of qualified IT
professionals in the dynamic labor markets that we meet in emerging economies? An
HRIS enables HR specialists to focus on workforce analysis, but simply having more
information does not automatically lead to a better analysis (Roehling et al., 2005). So
how can HRISs make positive contributions to the retention of IT professionals in
emerging markets? Is it desirable to implement globally unified HR functionalities or
should local adaptions also be made? In this paper these questions will be studied for
one specific global IT services provider: Accenture.

Method and procedure

Since the purpose of this research study was to investigate the contribution of a global
IT service provider’s HRIS to staff retention, the appropriate research method was to
generate an “exploratory-descriptive” case study at this company (Yin, 2003). This
research method enables one to elicit data and information from informants with the
purpose of building a theory rather than testing one (Myers and Avison, 2002).
The research was carried out by Accenture itself. Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with net revenues of USD
19.7 billion in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. It is committed to delivering services to
businesses and governments, and employs more than 175,000 people in 49 countries.
The author of this paper is himself an Accenture employee. His position does not
include any HR management responsibility or involvement. In order to carry out his
research independently, the author adopted the role of professional stranger (Ager,
1980), also known as outsider, which required an “attitude of principled doubting of
social self-evidence” (Hitzler, 1988, p. 19).
 ITP Research framework
The increase of outsourcing, including offshore outsourcing, makes the management of
22,3 dispersed expertise more and more important. Oshri et al. (2007) have identified
“monitoring and expertise development and retention at project and organizational
levels” as the best practice for this purpose. Knowledge management plays an
important role here. Martinsons (1997, p. 40, Table 2) identified six main activities of
274 knowledge-based systems in human resource management: human resource planning,
recruitment and selection, staff development, performance appraisal, regulatory
compliance and benefits administration. These activities are still relevant today. In this
paper’s analysis, they will be coupled with the functionalities of Accenture’s HRIS
application suite. For this purpose, the staff development and regulatory compliance
activities will be merged, since their generic and specific training components overlap
within the context of an HRIS. The recruitment and selection activity will be not
included here, as it is not related to retention management.
The focus of this paper is on how HRISs can make positive contributions to the
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retention of IT professionals in emerging markets. This analysis is carried out per HR

functionality in the six developing countries investigated. Derived from this focus is
the question of whether it is especially global functionality or local adaptions that
contribute to retention management. This research framework is detailed in Figure 1.

Data collection and analysis

To carry out the research done for this paper, sixteen of Accenture’s HR executives and
managers were interviewed in July and August 2007. For these interviews a
semi-structured questionnaire was used and the company’s HR functionalities and
their contribution to retention management were discussed. Specific attention was paid
to local adaptions to globally implemented HR functionalities. The local context was
discussed too, including the labor market situation and the reasons why employees
have left Accenture. The executives and managers interviewed work for the company’s
Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Latvia and Slovakia branches, which means that each

Figure 1.
Research framework
 of the three emerging continents was included with two representative countries, as Human resources
detailed in Table I. All interviewees themselves originate from these developing
countries and hold positions that include responsibility for staff retention there. The
information
choice for interviewing managers only - and not employees - was made because the system
purpose was to investigate HR functionality implementation. Employees notice only a
limited portion of their company’s HRIS’s functionalities, nor can they provide
additional insight into the choice between global systems and local adaptions. All 275
interviews were held by telephone; they each took an hour and a half and were taped
and fully transcribed. In addition, information available in the public domain, such as
annual reports and newspaper clippings, was reviewed for this study.
The interview transcripts and responses to the questionnaires were studied to
identify the contribution of the Accenture HRIS to staff retention by capturing the
ideas and phenomena described by interviewees. Data analysis was conducted in three
stages: preliminary analysis, formal analysis and final data analysis (Rubin and Rubin,
1995, p. 226). Of these, the preliminary analysis was already carried out during the
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interviews. Afterwards, the information obtained was subjected to an interpretative

analysis in order to structure it so that it would match the research question. This
meant coupling theoretical concepts with the empirical data collected. The
consolidated conclusions of all sixteen interviews were then used as input for the
final data analysis, as detailed in this paper. This was an iterative process that relied
on the use of “descriptive”, “interpretative” and “pattern” codes (Miles and Huberman,
1994, p. 57).

Case study description

Accenture was established in the late 1940s as Arthur Anderson & Co. It transformed
into an independent business unit called Anderson Consulting in 1989. The decision to
rename the company Accenture was taken in August 2000 and became effective per 1
January 2001 (Accenture, 2005). The company focuses on service delivery, both in the
field of management consulting and that of technology and outsourcing services. Each
division has its own characteristics. Management consulting work usually has short

No. Role Level Date of interview Geography

1. Country HR manager Executive August 7, 2007 Brazil

2. General HR manager Executive July 19, 2007 India
3. General HR manager Executive August 7, 2007 Brazil
4. Recruiting manager Manager July 20, 2007 Latvia
5. Country HR manager Executive August 7, 2007 Slovakia
6. General HR manager Executive July 25, 2007 China
7. Recruiting manager Manager August 1, 2007 China
8. Recruiting manager Manager August 2, 2007 Argentina
9. General HR manager Executive July 27, 2007 India
10. Country HR manager Executive July 20, 2007 Latvia
11. General HR manager Executive July 20, 2007 Argentina
12. General HR manager Manager August 3, 2007 Argentina
13. General HR manager Executive August 14, 2007 India
14. Recruiting manager Manager August 1, 2007 China
15. General HR manager Manager July 31, 2007 China Table I.
16. General HR manager Executive August 1, 2007 China The interviewees
 ITP contract periods and is by definition carried out on the clients’ board and senior
management level. Technology and outsourcing services are delivered with much
22,3 longer contract periods: 36 months is not unusual for outsourcing contracts, nor is 12 to
18 months for the implementation of an IT system. Of course, this has consequences for
the HRIS needed.
This study focuses on the HRIS of the company’s technology and outsourcing
276 services branch, since that is where most growth has taken place in emerging markets.
Also, Accenture plans to achieve its future growth especially in this area. The biggest
difficulty in realizing these growth objectives is retaining its staff – a problem much
greater than that of recruiting new employees. Says the Indian HR executive:
“Accenture India processes about 40,000 CVs every month. [. . .] We have industrialized
the entire process of making offers, up to senior manager level. Only at senior executive
level will we look at it more flexibly. Recruiting is relatively repeatable and
predictable.” Much the same came from his Argentinian, Brazilian and Chinese
colleagues. In these countries Accenture has more than a thousand employees working
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in technology and outsourcing services. As in India, size has forced them to

industrialize their recruiting process. In countries where the operation is smaller,
however, recruiting does require attention if the company’s growth targets are to be
met. According to the Latvian HR executive, recruiting is “not easy, to be honest.” And
her colleague adds: “Accenture was only established in Latvia 5 years ago. We now
have around 280 people.” Their smaller size makes Accenture less visible in Latvia and
Slovakia, which renders recruiting new staff more difficult. All national subsidiaries do
of course profit from Accenture’s international reputation. According to the Indian HR
executive, people join Accenture because it is:
[. . .] a global brand, and we are not new in India. [. . .] Our name is well known in the market.
[. . .] And people believe that because we are a large global organization, we get better
engagements. Our engagements are indeed very large, with end-to-end service delivery
responsibility.
Unambiguous numerical data on labor markets and the pressure on them is hard to
come by in the countries investigated for this paper. Staff turnover is difficult to assess.
Generally, the demand for qualified IT professionals seems to be greater than the
number of them that is available (IDC, 2007; Worldbank, 2007; Dutta and Mia, 2008;
Johnson, 2008). This puts the market under pressure. IT professionals who consider
taking a new job often have a choice of several positions. Labor market flexibility
increases quickly, and not only in countries such as India (Bose, 2006) and China
(Mohapatra et al., 2007), but in Brazil (Cavalcanti et al., 2008) and Argentina (Barraud
and Calfat, 2008) too. Even in new European Union members such as Slovakia and
Latvia flexibility increases (Pridham, 2008), a development much influenced by the
positive effect of their admittance to the Union on the potential for information
technology export to other member states.

Results
The most important cause of staff turnover is the growth of other companies,
especially in emerging economies. The Chinese HR executive commented: “Accenture
was the first multinational company in Dalian. So we could recruit people with seven
years of experience. But after a year, when other multinational companies came to
Dalian, they left Accenture.” Newly established companies need experienced staff to
make a flying start. Such experienced employees must be recruited from the local labor
 market, which influences the staff retention of the companies already established there. Human resources
It is exactly like this that Accenture India grew from 200 employees in 2001 to more
than 38 thousand in 2007. The Indian HR executive explained:
information
system
There are differences between the hiring strategies of purely Indian companies like Infosys or
Wipro and those of IBM or Accenture. Some 70 percent of Accenture’s recruits are
experienced people, while 30 percent of them are drawn straight from campus. Purely Indian
companies have a reversed mix: about 30 percent with work experience and 70 percent 277
straight from campus.
Companies in emerging markets must therefore arm themselves against the attraction
of their competitors if they are to realize their growth targets.
Accenture, too, faces employee turnover. To what degree such a phenomenon
happens, the interviewees will not disclose since this is considered sensitive
information in the company’s competitive environment. They were willing to provide
qualitative information, however. The most striking similarity between their six
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countries is that fact that there is much more turnover among employees with less than
five years’ experience than among those who have more. And in all six countries
remuneration and career opportunities are the most important reasons to leave the
company. Regrettably, the research material offers no basis on which to distinguish
between men and women or between IT staff types such as new graduates and
experienced professionals. Some other insights were gained, however – for instance on
the short-term outlook shown by young professionals in Argentina. The national HR
manager explained:
Although most of them say they are very happy working here, salary increase is their most
important focus. They are young and have nothing to lose. They don’t take into consideration
the risks involved in making a change to a smaller company that is less stable and lacks
training programs. They think of today only.
In Brazil, more or less similarly, getting better training opportunities proved not to be a
key incentive for leaving Accenture either, at least as perceived by the interviewees
from that country. By contrast, in other countries it was found that busy schedules
working for clients, which made it difficult for employees to actually follow the
training programs they had been assigned to, was a reason to leave the company. No
explanation has been found for this discrepancy yet. Finally, it turns out there are
important differences between the countries with respect to the urge of their employees
to work with the latest technology. Doing so was an important retention motive in all
countries except China. This, too, has yet to be explained, but perhaps the dominance
of legacy applications in the portfolios of Chinese service providers plays a role.

HRIS system conditions

As we have seen, HRISs can facilitate retention management. But when can an
HRIS be considered successful? Haines and Petit (1997, p. 263, Figure 1) researched
the conditions for successful HRISs and found three items to be the most important:
the competences of the HR manager (“individual/tasks”), the way in which the HR
department has been organized (“organizational”) and the application itself
(“system”). They also note that “user information satisfaction’ is a consequence of
the HRIS” success and causes it to really be used. To which degree does Accenture
meet the eleven system conditions identified in Haines and Petit’s model? An
assessment is presented in Table II. The eleven system conditions are used there as
 ITP
System conditions Accenture’s HRIS
22,3
1. Involvement Both the HR and the IT communities are deeply
involved in the HRIS development and
implementation process. The global Accenture HR
team and the regional and country HR teams regularly
278 consult to decide on adaptions and improvements
intended to ensure a continued match between the
HRIS and the needs of the company’s business and HR
managers
2. Training All HR staff, business managers and employees
receive sufficient training on how to use the HRIS.
Most training courses are web-based. When new
functionalities are implemented, conference calls are
often held to inform those involved on the changes
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and the way the HRIS now works

3. Support As Accenture has a skilled helpdesk and qualified
support staff, and since it implements the concept of
key users, support for the HR staff is sufficient. This
support consists of regional Administrative Shared
Service Centers that focus primarily on the execution
of administrative tasks and making HR reports
4. Documentation The company’s HRIS documentation has not been
assessed. No conclusions can therefore be drawn
5. Application development The HRIS application is an SAP-based, in-house
solution with extensive web functionalities and a good
match with the requirements of the company’s
business and HR managers
6. Dependence The HRIS application is maintained by Accenture’s
own IT staff. They manage and maintain it by
“remote-control”, which means that dependency is
very limited
7. On line All functionality is on-line: there is a web interface and
its users can use the application interactively. The
HRIS also includes self-service functionalities for both
managers and employees
8. Access All HR staff have access to the HRIS, “anywhere, any
time”, through a web interface. The company’s
internal IT staff facilitates this access
9. Applications The HR staff has access to the applications of the
HRIS on the basis of “need to have to execute their
tasks”. Access authorization is given from a central
level. The employee’s role and work level are the
determining factors
10. Ease-of-use Ease-of-use is very good because of the web interface
for HR staff, managers and employees, but also
because of the extensive reporting facilities
11. Usefulness De HR staff perceives the HRIS as useful. This is
Table II. especially because of the high degree to which its
Haines and Petit’s HRIS functionalities have been integrated with each
system conditions and other
their applicability to
Accenture Source: Haines and Petit (1997)
 a framework to describe Accenture’s HRIS. In turn, the descriptions provide a better Human resources
insight for the analysis of the HRM activities and the functionalities of the
Accenture HRM application suite with respect to retention management, as detailed
information
in Table III. system
HRM activities and Accenture’s HRIS
For the purpose of retention management, the following HRM activities are most 279
important: human resource planning, staff development, performance appraisal and
compensation and benefits administration. These activities will be analyzed in the
following sections of this paper. In Table III the link is made between them and the
Accenture HRIS application suite. Most applications are quite known in the HR
practice so they will be described here in short. Celebrating Performance is an
application that enables business managers to reward professionals extra. The budget
available to do so depends on managers’ position within the organization. MyHoldings
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registers the stocks held by Accenture employees and facilitates their transactions. It
also enables the company to offer its employees stocks against reduced rates, and to
reward exceptional performance with extra stocks.
The interviews also touched on the cost effectivity of Accenture’s HRIS, which was
perceived as satisfactory, especially because of its high degree of integration and its
global functionalities. The Indian executive summarized this opinion as follows:
“Service providers should take an industrialized approach, combining human effort
and fact-based management. Closely monitoring human efforts pays off. [. . .] A highly
standardized and integrated HR application portfolio supports retention management
as there are hardly any differences per country. It also lowers the cost-to-serve of the
HR application portfolio.”

Human resource planning

Human resource planning is an important aspect of retention management since it
allows the company to assign employees to work in a manner that suits their
development. Job rotation is important here: every employee is given a new role every
18 or 24 months. And of course, care is taken of their professional development and

Accenture HRIS applications related to retention management

Main activitities
of Martinson’s
framework
related to
retention Celebrating Table III.
management MyScheduling MyLearning MyPerformance Performance MyHoldings SAP The functionalities of the
Accenture HRM
Human resource application suite relevant
planning U for retention
Staff development management, linked to
and regulatory the framework proposed
compliance U by Martinsons (1997) for
Performance human resources
appraisal U management applications
Benefits of knowledge-based
administration U U U systems
 ITP growth in the meantime too. In doing so, Accenture tries to match the employee’s
personal preferences. The HR executive from Argentina confirmed this:
22,3
We try to know our people’s preferences. When we staff a project we always take these into
consideration. If people ask for a change we try to give them one, for example by offering
them work in another part of the company. But sometimes the nature of their work makes it
very difficult to find another option, something that would suit their needs better. In such
280 cases people often leave Accenture.
In this respect, Argentina proved no different from the other countries investigated.
Another important aspect in scheduling is the distance between work and home. There
are major differences between the countries in this field. In India, for example, working
on other locations and moving abroad for work offers status. Not so in China, where
only junior employees are willing to relocate. Once Chinese IT professionals have
established themselves somewhere, they are very reluctant to move. Most other
countries are rather more like China than India. But even in India the employees’ social
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environment exerts some pressure on them to find a job near their home town
ultimately. Says the Indian HR executive: “Therefore Accenture has offices in
Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.”
In their weekly scheduling calls the company’s HR and business managers confer
on the assignment of their people. They establish estimates of the future requirements
of each client and decide which employees will be used to staff each project. The
MyScheduling tool enables these managers to take account not only of each employee’s
availability but of their competences, their agreed professional development and their
experience. Using this tool, these managers can do their work decisively. For these
weekly scheduling activities, the HR managers have more information available than
only that directly concerning employees and their availability. A Chinese HR executive
explained:
We can use MyScheduling to obtain information about projects anywhere, and managers in
other locations can look into our staff and their résumés too. We can assign our resources to
projects outside China, rather than to China Delivery Center projects only. Actually, we only
use MyScheduling to see project information from other locations and to show our resources
to managers working in other locations.
This HRIS functionality is considered very important by the interviewees, especially
since increasing numbers of global engagements require staffing. These can be used
for staff retention purposes. Brazil’s general HR Manager explained: “It is important
for us to be able to offer our employees ‘more interesting assignments” and “better
growth perspectives”, and the HRIS helps us to do so.’ Not all countries find this such
an important feature, however; the Latvian HR department, for instance, did not seem
to value it so highly. The difference can perhaps be explained by the larger size of the
Brazilian subsidiary as well as its higher level of maturity.

Staff development & regulatory compliance

Supporting employees in realizing their professional development targets is the aim of
the education and training tooling. As such, it contributes significantly to retention
management. This was the view expressed by all interviewees. Globally standardized
curricula for defined organizational profiles are offered through the company’s HRIS.
This means that employees who have taken such training courses can be assigned to
Accenture engagements in other locations than their home countries too. They become
 more exchangeable and their training and development opportunities are improved. Human resources
The Latvian Country HR Manager believed that “the training functionality in the HRIS
contributes positively to retention management”. This does not mean that there are no
information
differences between the countries. In fact, for every country Accenture has made their system
own standard curriculum available that trains people for specific local roles. And every
country can add local training courses of it own. All these functionalities are united
into MyLearning. Employees use a web interface to sign up for training (both in 281
classrooms and computer-based), and they are scheduled for them and notified of their
scheduling through this interface as well. In addition, the application is coupled to the
MyPerformance application, through which the agreements made with every employee
regarding their personal development can be monitored.
One aspect in which there are differences between the various countries is in their
preference for classroom or computer-based training. Classroom training is preferred
everywhere, but in China. The local HR executive explained:
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All courses are in English, and while the Chinese are of course quite capable of learning
English, it takes extra time. It is more difficult for them than for, for instance, people from
India. And if the language is a barrier, it is harder to understand the content too. It simply
takes them longer. Therefore they like to have more training online before taking class room
training: to make sure they understand the content.”
The Indian branch is the only subsidiary that sends its employees abroad regularly to
take classroom training courses. For all other subsidiaries this is too expensive, so they
send only their management-level high potentials. The Argentinian HR manager
explained:
Very few of our people train abroad. It is very costly for us to send people elsewhere, so it
really isn’t an option in most cases. Some travel to Brazil, since it is relatively close by, but
sending people to Europe or the USA is just too expensive. We do this only for some people at
management level, to acknowledge that person’s value to us, but even at that level it isn’t for
everyone.
Labor shortages may, however, change this situation in the longer term.

Benefits administration
All interviewees agreed that remuneration is an important factor in retention
management. In most of the countries studied, people who left the company often did
so to move to its competitors because they were offered higher salaries. But money is
not the only reason for this phenomenon. In Argentina, for example, the situation is
slightly different. Its HR executive explained:
The most important aspect here is salary, compensation. But for many this argument is
followed closely by the nature of their work or its location. We have seen people leave who
wanted to continue to work in a systems environment, but in another town. Others leave to
start work in a completely different field, or to start their own business.”
With respect to remuneration, Accenture’s Chinese subsidiary had an additional
challenge to overcome. “Many international companies use only one single salary scale
for the whole of China,” the Chinese HR executive explained, “even though salaries in
for example Shanghai are normally 20 to 30 percent higher than in Dalian. This
distorts the labor market. It means we have to put in much effort to retain our people.”
Because of such situations, Accenture takes local salary differences into consideration
 ITP when determining its sourcing strategy and scheduling process. “Our solution is to
recruit in Shanghai for project staffing, and in Dalian for the lower-cost employees
22,3 needed for maintenance and some long-term contracts only”, the executive continued.
Where money was the primary reason for leaving the firm, various solutions have been
implemented in order to cope with high attrition levels. Long-term bonuses, for
example, are often used in India to retain employees for their engagements. The
282 country’s HR executive told us how this practice was implemented:
Such bonuses are related to various milestones along the contract period of long-term
outsourcing deals, with the intention of keeping our staff from rolling off the project. For
long-term projects, bonuses represent about 5 percent of the payroll budget.
Bonuses are always paid together with the employee’s regular salary payments. Then
there are Accenture’s tools Celebrating Performance and MyHoldings. These global
applications contribute significantly to the company’s retention of its employees.
Celebrating Performance allows the company to give “credit points” to employees
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whose performance has been above expectation. It is used especially in developing

countries, since these credit points are worth more there than in the West. Another
advantage of this HRIS functionality is that it can be used at any time of the day. An
HR manager from Argentina commented on Celebrating Performance:
Personally, I like it because I think it’s a very good way to motivate people. They don’t have
to wait until their evaluation meetings or for their managers’ regular feedback moments to get
recognition for their work attitude or whatever it is that their supervisors want to applaud.
For me it’s really good. We are helping each other use it and do our best to motivate people to
do so too.
The application now functions well, but it had a difficult start because its intended use
had not been well communicated about. MyHoldings facilitates the administrative
processing of stock sales by the company’s employees. Since employees get special
rates when they buy stocks, many consider this a valuable fringe benefit that
influences the way they feel about working for the company. There are no differences
between the countries investigated here with respect to how such benefits are
perceived.

Performance appraisal
A central role in performance appraisal is played by career counselors. For the purpose
of our analysis, performance appraisal could be divided into two elements:
performance management and talent management. Every employee has his own
counselor, who supports and coaches them in determining and realizing their
individual objectives. These counselors are the employees’ first point of contact and
should represent their interests vis-à-vis the company.
Every employee’s individual development objectives are outlined in Accenture’s
MyPerformance application. Latvia’s HR executive considered goal setting “an issue”:
adapting targets once they are laid down is difficult, but considering the dynamics of
the tasks carried out by the company’s employees it must be done. The conclusion
must be that the resulting heightened administrative load for both counselors and
employees does not contribute to staff retention.
Let us take a closer look at the goal setting process. Once a year, career counselors
discuss every employee’s objectives as part of the company’s global HR process.
Agreements are also made on which training courses the employee should take. One
 important change considering development trajectories happened relatively recently: Human resources
the concept of “up or out”, which mean that an employee should be promoted or leave,
and which had been used for years, was relinquished. Especially in the case of
information
technology experts this concept often just did not work, so an alternative way of system
setting targets was devised. For such specialists, several development trajectories have
been set up. Thus, qualified experts – and especially those who do not have
management ambitions – can be retained and offered a career in a way that is valuable 283
for both themselves and the company.
Career councilors help their councilees steer their careers. By doing so, they also
increase the employees’ commitment to Accenture and so contribute significantly to
staff retention. Therefore, having career counselors is important. Accenture’s HRIS
offers the functionalities for their work. According to the Indian HR executive, the
efforts of their career counselors are measured too: “At the moment, we a trying to
measure our employees’ satisfaction through a survey.” This fits in with the
industrialized approach to HR implemented in India. Accenture China has opted for a
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positive stimulus:
We have an award for the best counselor. Also, we have an award for innovative ideas. [. . .]
We use staff surveys to find out about both: we ask people to vote for the people they believe
are good counselors, and to evaluate innovative ideas to determine their value.

Discussion
This study endeavors to extend the analysis of HRISs beyond their functionalities. We
have found evidence suggesting that some degree of local adaption is required to
support retention management best. This will of course have an impact on the cost
effectiveness of the HRIS. However, to be effective local adaptions are required. So now
the question remains: which factors determine the degree to which local adaptions are
needed?
For Human Resource Planning global functionalities are a requirement. They
enable the company to optimize the allocation of their Delivery Center employees in
developing countries to the company’s portfolio of global engagements. An interesting
observation in this respect is the willingness of Indian IT professionals to work abroad.
A global system supports their allocation to on-site engagements in developed
countries. Chinese IT professionals, on the other hand, prefer to work close to their
home town – and, in fact, despite their willingness to work abroad, so do Indians. This
is because of their strong family relations. No such preference has been noted for the
other four developing countries investigated here. One explanation for this could be
that it is not such an important issue in relatively small countries like Slovakia and
Latvia. Yet, such an explanation does not support the case of Brazil and Argentina.
Perhaps the difference with China and India is because the much more intensive
exchange and collaboration between national Delivery Centers in these two countries
as compared to the other four.
The most important aspect for staff development and regulatory compliance is the
availability of a standardized system across all Delivery Centers. This requires the
establishment of global HR functions: a globally standardized curriculum of well-defined
organizational roles. At the same time, adding local training courses to the global tool is
critical because such tools reinforce the retention of employees. Especially in the larger
countries, such as Brazil and India, such features are used to a greater degree. For Brazil
the language barrier is an important driver: this subsidiary provides local training in
 ITP Portuguese instead of English. The India subsidiary considers it important to add specific
training for groups of IT professionals who are allocated to large engagements (of more
22,3 than 100 million US$). In fact, it is only India that sends their IT professionals abroad for
training, which is considered an incentive element for the employee.
Benefits Administration includes many other benefits other than just salaries. It is
worthwhile to note that unlike MyHoldings, Celebrating Performance is not linked to
284 the local price level. The stocks employees can buy are related to their salary, whereas
Celebrating Performance bonus points are totally unrelated to salary. Consequently,
bonus points are worth much more in developing countries than in developed
countries. Another difficulty identified is the difference in salary level within a country.
The larger the country, the more prominent these differences are. The Chinese
subsidiary faces major challenges in this regard as its Delivery Center is located in an
area with a relatively low salary level. To keep its IT professionals, the Chinese
subsidiary offers higher salaries which means its staff earns the same level of salary as
colleagues in high-salary regions. In Argentina the problem is the country’s
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hyper-inflation, which renders it difficult to keep employees since Accenture guidelines

allow for only one salary adjustment per year.
Regarding Performance Appraisal, HRIS support for performance management
requires substantial administrative effort from both the IT professionals and their
managers. Similarly, career counselors are considered imperative for retention
management in all countries. The Indian subsidiary, for example, has chosen to
monitor their career counselors closely, in order to manage talent based on the
counselors’ evaluations. The Chinese subsidiary has chosen to give periodic awards to
the best career counselors.

Analyses results. What are important elements in retention management, by HRIS

functionality?
(1) Human resource planning. MySchedulding facilitates the assignment of
employees to work that suits their developments; doing so may include job
rotation:
.
knowing one’s employees’ preferences;
.
support working abroad (out of the country); and
.
support working close their home town (in country).
(2) Benefits administration. Celebrating Performance and MyHoldings contribute
to retention management as they are perceived as part of the remuneration:
. implement alternative incentives, such as Celebrating Performance rewards;
.
facilitate regional differences in salary levels; and
.
facilitate hyper-inflation.
(3) Staff development and regulatory compliance. MyLearning enables the company
to add local courses to the curriculum of global courses (which includes globally
standardized courses for specific profiles):
.
standardize capabilities across Delivery Centers;
.
facilitate localization: option to add local training courses to the global tool;
and
.
facilitate training abroad as an incentive.
 (4) Performance appraisal. MyPerformance management is the joint responsibility Human resources
of career counselors and managers, and contributes to retention management:
information
.
connecting to employees is of key importance;
system
.
avoid substantial administrative effort; and
.
the role of career counselors is of key importance.
So what have HRISs contributed to the organization’s efforts to control staff retention? 285
This paper argues that HRISs are useful especially in facilitating retention
management. For this purpose, HRISs have indirect influence on retention
management. But an HRIS can also be a strategic HR tool. HR executives can use
HSISs to support their strategy and talent management programs by considering some
specific functionalities, such as human resource planning, staff development and
regulatory compliance, benefits administration, and performance appraisal.
In the field of human resource planning HRISs contribute to staff retention especially
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by enabling organizations to align their employees’ assignments with their personal

preferences and capabilities. We have come across cases where individual wishes and
know-how were not matched with assignments as closely as they wanted. In those cases
staff development and training has assisted to bridge such gaps. To ensure the
continuous alignment of demand and supply a staff disposition plan must be formulated
on the basis of the company’s HR strategy. These are multi-annual plans in which service
providers define in detail how they intend to fulfill future projects and engagements. A
comparison with the capabilities and ambitions of today’s employees then shows where
there may be gaps to fill. And this can then be done by training one’s current professionals,
by flying in employees from business units abroad and by hiring new staff.
Benefits administration is related to financial compensation. Service providers must
offer competitive terms of employment - and not just salaries but other benefits as well.
Many service providers use benefits in order to retain their staff in the long term, such
as shares in the company, to be released gradually over a three to five-year period, or
bonuses paid to employees only if they have stayed with the company in the next six
month. The question is how professionals assess the balance between current
gratification and future prospects. Rewards for individual or group performance play a
major role in such instances, although individual rewards obviously do not stimulate
fellowship among the company’s staff.
In performance appraisal, personal contact with the organization’s professionals is a
key issue. It is really important that employees’ individual expectations are managed
well, but the same holds for the expectations of departments and divisions. The degree
to which objectivity regarding individuals’ performances is properly assessed is very
important. And employees’ sense of being appraised objectively is increased by setting
clear objectives before the assignment, and by assessing their performance together
with them afterwards.
These insights should be used to set the HRIS parameters and to implement its
functionalities. When such aspects are implemented, HRIS may indeed contribute
significantly to the optimization of retention management.

Conclusions
On the basis of the data collected at Accenture, we conclude that some functionalities of
HRISs can support the retention of employees. In particular, allocation of staff,
scheduling and training provides additional tools which assist maintaining employees’
 ITP satisfaction high and therefore reduce attrition levels. However, while such a system
perceives to be global, minor local adaptations and in some cases additions of some
22,3 specific functionalities are required to improve the match between the firm’s global
policy and some local needs.

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About the author

Erik Beulen (PhD) is a full Professor at Tilburg University in The Netherlands, where he holds
the Accenture Global Sourcing Chair. Beulen is also employed by Accenture as a senior manager.
His papers have been published in journals such as the European Management Journal,
Communications Association for Information Systems and Information Technology for
Development and the Proceedings of the HICSS and ICIS. Beulen has contributed chapters in
editorial books by Erran Carmel, Wendy Currie, Suzanne Rivard and Benoit Aubert, and Wim
van Grembergen. He is the author and co-author of various Dutch-language books on the subject
of outsourcing and offshore outsourcing. Beulen also is co-author of the book Managing IT
Outsourcing, published by Routledge, UK. Erik Beulen can be contacted at erik.beulen@uvt.nl

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