It's not an easy time to be a human resources manager in India. The economy is employing more talent than the country’s educational institutions can produce, and the surfeit of jobs is making it hard for even the top firms to retain staff, especially young employees.

Faced with this new kind of youth unrest, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is developing an innovative HR policy that focuses on young executives. The initiative comes after an employee engagement survey conducted by the company in association with the International Management Institute revealed that executives in the age group of 22-30 have higher levels of dissatisfaction as compared to older ones.

“We realised that young people have different expectations, needs and requirements. And we are taking action according to the feedback we have received,” says V C Agrawal, IOC’s director of human resources.

For instance, says Agrawal, the pay structure till now was broken into cash and reimbursement components. “The survey revealed that reimbursements like leave travel concession (LTC) could not be fully availed by young single workers,” Agrawal says.

This is because LTC is given for the entire family’s travel, putting a single person is at a disadvanatge.

“We have decided to restructure this and give cash to individual employees irrespective of family size. Let the individual decide how he wants to travel and spend his money,” Agrawal said.

The effort is to increase the take-home pay, an area where PSUs often lag behind. At the entry level, the cost to the company in the private and public sector does not vary much. However, what does clinch the deal in favour of the private sector is the cash in hand factor, which is higher in private sector jobs.

... contd.