The Great Resignation witnesses a reversal, homecoming
MUMBAI: The great resignation is seeing a reversal where employees are leaving their new jobs and heading back to their former employers. Recruiters are calling this -’infant mortality’ where newcomers realise they are not the right fit and want to head back to a familiar place workspace. This reverse migration is happening mainly in client-facing roles in tech, startup and consumer industries.
“The importance of familiarity is often unrecognised. When there are loan repayments, onboarding during Covid, no connectivity with colleagues then one seeks out the known faces,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of staffing firm TeamLease Services. She has noted that this trend is shaping up amongst the junior to middle management segments who dial their former employers and make a move at the same salary or with a marginal hike.
The ‘Great Resignation’ was the term coined a few months ago when employees, mainly in the tech and startup sector, were flooded with offers, joining bonuses and counter offers. As India Inc tries to keep pace with digital adoption and cloud based services, their need for experts in Java, Javascript, Python, SQL, remains unsatiated.
But with the rapid resignations and immediate hiring came in onboarding challenges where the employee feels lost despite the 60-100% hikes. Recruiters use the term ‘infant mortality’ to define those leaving their jobs in the first 1-3 month period. While some may head for a new firm, there is a growing trend of heading back to familiar territory. “I call it going back to the roots. The tech sector and the e-commerce sector has seen many cases where employees are not being able to connect with the new firm. This is specially the case with new joinees who are working remotely and have not been part of the physical office workspace” said Pasupathi Sankaran, chief operating officer of recruitment firm Careernet. About 70% of the Bengaluru based firm’s clients are in the tech and startup space.
According to a study by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM)about 90% of chief executive officers (CEOs) expect to hire in 2022 similar or more than what they hired in 2021 and digital talent will make up for 50% of the new hires. In another study NASSCOM said that 450,000 employees were added in FY 2022. Getting a former employee back works out for the company as well and the trend is more prominent in the client facing roles.
“The fact that they know enough already about candidates on aspects like potential, culture fit, readiness for role etc making this an interesting proposition,” said Nitin Sethi, partner and CEO Human Capital Solutions at consulting firm AON India. “Be it market facing roles, leadership hiring, hiring for strategic initiatives or even at middle and junior levels - many companies are now tapping this segment,” Sethi added.