Tesco's Indian arm to hire 2,000 more this year, aims at staff retention

Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), the global services arm for Tesco, the UK-headquartered multinational retail giant, is looking to hire 2,000 people this year.

Dayanand Allapur, head of human resources, Tesco HSC, said: “We will add another 2,000 employees in both IT (information technology) and non-IT processes.” There are 5,300 employees in the India operations and Allapur says 60 per cent of the new hires will be from college campuses.

It has also planned to address attrition by encouraging enrollment in short-duration courses in collaboration with premier colleges. “The churn rates in back office operations are traditionally between 18 and 22 per cent and to address this, we have decided to introduce job-ready courses that will enable building a ready talent pool for retail business processes,” said Allapur, on the sidelines of the Nasscom Leadership Summit 2011.

The company is looking to launch these courses by the end of this year and is reportedly in talks with institutes of management, technology and tier-II colleges.

Allapur said employee retention was a serious challenge and 44 per cent of last year’s additions were by internal referrals. They’d also launched employee benefit schemes such as health care plans and an in-house job portal encouraging employees to switch jobs internally. “We saw a marginal dip in attrition levels and as we hire more people this year and grow our campus facility in Bangalore, we should further better our employee retention measures,” he hoped.

The Indian centre was set up seven years before, when Tesco decided to have a wholly owned subsidiary rather than outsource to local companies, because it wanted Tesco employees to handle critical business processes, software development and support. “India is critical to the global strategy of Tesco, especially for support infrastructure. Today, this Bangalore-based centre supports the entire operations in China, Thailand and the UK,” said Allapur.

While the government of India contemplates if it should allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in the politically sensitive multi-brand retail sector, Tesco’s centre here has developed technology processes that enable the chain to set up operations in any country within three months. “We formed a retail test club, where various issues are being addressed through designing of new software and the Indian centre has developed tools that enable setting up a new store within three months, as against the 10-14 months taken otherwise,” he said.

The current regulations on retail allow 100 per cent FDI only in wholesale cash-and-carry trading. In single-brand retailing, 51 per cent FDI is allowed. And, none is permitted in multi-brand retailing.