The war for attracting good tech talent has been on for some time now, and accelerated by the pandemic. Many of the big tech giants have been trying to lure the best of talent by offering them higher perks and bonuses. Some companies have gone to the extent of giving superbikes to candidates post their acceptance of the job offers.
In the financial services sector and in the non-banking financial companies (NBFC), many services have gone digital. In fact, there has been a tectonic shift in the banking and financial sector, where the need for tech talent has surged manifold in the last couple of years. Home Credit India is also in need of some of the best analysts, IT professionals and data scientists.
As Harshita Khanna, chief people officer, Home Credit India, shares, the challenge is not in finding the right people but making them accept the offer.
“In this war for talent, all tech and IT professionals usually have multiple offers in hand. Therefore, to make them accept the job offer was a challenge for us in the past,” says Khanna, who goes on to reveal that there was a time Home Credit India witnessed only three offers being accepted out of 10. However, this has changed now, thanks to an enhanced referral policy.
Recently, to attract the right IT talent, the Company came up with a special employee referral policy only for hiring techies.
“With the introduction of the special employee referral policy we have seen a 70 per cent increase in the offer-to-joining ratio”
Harshita Khanna, chief people officer, Home Credit India
It wasn’t as if Home Credit India never had a referral policy before. It did, and the same still continues. However, with the war for tech talent intensifying in the recent past, the Company decided to come up with a ‘special’ employee referral policy under which it decided to increase the employee referral rewards for the employees, exclusively for tech talent. The normal employee referral policy had various restrictions. For instance, certain levels of employees were not allowed to refer people. However, these restrictions were done away with and now any employee can refer any friend or known person for a tech role.
Hiring through employee referrals is a win-win for the Company as well as the employees.
How employees benefit
As per Home Credit India’s special employee referral programme, any employee can earn a reward of Rs 50,000 going up to even Rs 1,00,000, depending upon the level or position the person has been hired for. The more critical the position, higher the reward. If the referred employee completes three months with the Company, the Home Credit staff receives his/her reward.
How the Company benefits
It is a win-win for the Company as well, since the referred employees will be aware of the culture of the company well in advance, making it easier for them to settle down.
Furthermore, Home Credit India has also made changes to its onboarding and hiring strategy. Interaction with the candidates begins 15 days before their joining, so that the engagement level remains high and also to avoid any last-minute drop outs.
As Khanna shares with HRKatha, the special referral policy has really given some great results. “With the introduction of the special employee referral policy we have seen a 70 per cent increase in the offer-to-joining ratio,” reveals Khanna.
She goes on to add that this referral policy is being run like a campaign at Home Credit India and is growing popular amongst the employees.
Succession planning
Career development of employees is also a major focus area for Home Credit. The Company believes in building and grooming internal talent and giving great careers to its people. At all levels, the Company has a development plan for its employees to build leaders. At the junior level, for operators and sales executives working in the field, the Company has a leadership-development plan where high potentials are selected to get promoted as senior executives or team leaders.
The Company has assessment centres where employees are assessed on soft and hard skills to take up higher roles. It is a rather transparent process as all junior-level employees know how they will be assessed and what their compensation will be after promotion.
In fact, before employees go for the assessment, the Company also trains them to attempt these assessment examinations, a practice that was started after a positive feedback from the employees. “This also helps the employees understand whether the next role is suitable for them or not,” says Khanna.
Khanna shares that last year, the Company promoted 200 employees through this programme in which 15 per cent were first-time managers.
Subsequently, the Company has development plans for high potentials at the mid- level where employees are recommended by their functional heads and are trained to take up future roles.
Home Credit India is also coming up with mentoring programmes where employees will be mentored by CXOs. A pilot programme was conducted just last year, where 10 people participated. Coming months will witness a full implementation of the programme.