New technology making employees obsolete: Naik

Larsen & Toubro chairman says the 18.5% attrition of the its IT services company does not represent voluntary attrition

Attrition is not always about employees leaving a company for better prospects but many being asked to leave as they cannot keep pace with technology evolution.

A M Naik, chairman Larsen & Toubro and non-executive vice-chairman L&T Infotech said that the 18.5 per cent attrition of the its IT services company does not represent voluntary attrition.

"Over the years we have continuously become more efficient by use of technology & various tools and as we hire talent that caters to new technology. Some of the people cannot cope with such changes. So the 18.5 per cent attrition does not represent voluntary retirement or voluntary resignation. Rather less than 12 per cent of people normally leave voluntarily, the rest of them become obsolete, either due to inefficiency or due to lack of technological knowledge," said Naik during the L&T Infotech IPO press conference.

 

Indian IT players over the last few years have pressed the paddle for the retraining of its employee base as new technologies take centre-stage at clients business environment. For instance, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), country's largest IT services provider, is training 100,000 employees on digital technology. Similarly, Infosys had announced that it will train 40 per cent of its workforce in design thinking.

According to the company draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) the company's attrition for the FY15 was 18.5 per cent. L&T Infotech will launch its IPO on July 11 with the price band being fixed at Rs 705-710.

Naik also refuted that the senior management team at L&T Infotech has been extremely unstable. "I do not think that in the last few years senior people have left. Sudip Banerjee, CEO from 2008-2011 left as he could not travel was Bangalore based. But now he has joined the board of L&T Technology Services board. After that we had two people at helm-one of them left as he could not cope with the changing times. And the second person wanted to leave as he felt he was good at managing relations but not good at closing deals. But other than Banerjee and after him (V K) Magapu were at the helm the others were chief executives managing business units," he added.

After the resignation of Banerjee in 2011, L&T Infotech had appointed Vivek Chopra and Mukesh Aghi as chief executives, both quit in 2014. In March 2014, Chandrasekar Kakal had joined L&T Infotech as COO, reporting to V K Magapu, MD of the company.

Sanjay Jalona, took over the role of CEO & MD L&T infotech in August 2015. Before this he was with Infosys.