INTRODUCTION

DEFINITION

Attrition can be defined as "A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death”. While attrition rate is "the rate of shrinkage in size or number"

In the best of worlds, employees would love their jobs, like their co-workers, work hard for their employers, get paid well for their work, have ample chances for advancement, and flexible schedules so they could attend to personal or family needs when necessary.

But then there's the real world. And in the real world, employees, do leave, either because they want more money, hate the working conditions, hate their co-workers, want a change, or because their spouse gets a dream job in another state. So, what does that entire turnover cost? And what employees are likely to have the highest turnover? Who is likely to stay the longest?

Corporate is facing a lot of problems in employee retention these days. Hiring knowledgeable people for the job is essential for an employer. But retention is even more important than hiring. There is no dearth of opportunities for a talented person. There are many organizations which are looking for such employees. If a person is not satisfied by the job he’s doing, he may switch over to some other more suitable job.

Employees today are different. They are not the ones who don’t have good opportunities in hand. As soon as they feel dissatisfied with the current employer or the job, they switch over to the next job. It is the responsibility of the employer to retain their best employees. If they don’t, they would be left with no good employees. Employee retention matters, as, organizational issues such as training time and investment, costly candidate search etc., are involved. Hence, failing to retain a key employee is a costly proposition for any organization

THEORITICAL REVIEW

Introduction – Attrition

In today’s environment it becomes very important for organizations to retain their employees. The top organizations are on the top because they value their employees and they know how to keep them glued to the organization. Employees stay and leave organizations for some reasons. The reason may be personal or professional. These reasons should be understood by the employer and should be taken care of. The organizations are becoming aware of these reasons and adopting many strategies for employee retention.

Attrition is one of the biggest issues which the growing ITES industry in India is facing. The effects of attrition are wide varying and impacts the firms in terms of losses (due to training and administration cost, high recruitment cost), incompetent processes, inability to offer services for highly technical process

Attrition though a nuisance also has some associated benefits along with such as low cost of operation, knowledge sharing amongst the firms benefiting the overall industry in increasing its competencies. Attrition usually occurs on two fronts - people leaving the industry and people shifting jobs inside the industry. Both of them have separate causes which have been identified in this paper

IMPACT OF ATTRITION

Direct impact: A high attrition indicates the failure on the company’s ability to set effective HR priorities. Clients and business get affected and the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses get highlighted. New hires need to be constantly added, further costs in training them, getting them aligned to the company culture, etc.,—all a challenge.

Indirect impact: Difficulty in the company retaining remaining employees and to what extent? Problem for the company in attracting potential employees. Typically, high attrition also leads to a chronic or systemic cycle—attrition brings decreased productivity, people leave causing others to work harder and this contributes to more attrition. All this has a significant impact on the company’s strength in managing their business in a competitive environment.

The process of Employee retention will benefit an organization in the following ways:

The Cost of Turnover: The cost of employee turnover adds hundreds of thousands of money to a company's expenses. While it is difficult to fully calculate the cost of turnover (including hiring costs, training costs and productivity loss industry experts often quote 25% of the average employee salary as a conservative estimate.

Loss of Company Knowledge: When an employee leaves, he takes with him valuable knowledge about the company, customers, current projects and past history (sometimes to competitors). Often much time and money has been spent on the employee in expectation of a future return. When the employee leaves, the investment is not realized.

Interruption of Customer Service: Customers and clients do business with a company in part because of the people. Relationships are developed that encourage continued sponsorship of the business. When an employee leaves, the relationships that employee built for the company are severed, which could lead to potential customer loss.

Turnover leads to more turnovers: When an employee terminates, the effect is felt throughout the organization. Co-workers are often required to pick up the slack. The unspoken negativity often intensifies for the remaining staff.

Goodwill of the company: The goodwill of a company is maintained when the attrition rates are low. Higher retention rates motivate potential employees to join the organization.

Regaining efficiency: If an employee resigns, then good amount of time is lost in hiring a new employee and then training him/her and this goes to the loss of the company directly which many a times goes unnoticed. And even after this you cannot assure us of the same efficiency from the new employee

BENEFITS OF ATTRITION

Attrition rates are considered to be beneficial in some ways:

Removes bottle-neck in the progress of the company Creates space for the entry of new talents, external as well as internal Helps planting "ambassadors" in the eco-system who can have a positive

impact on the growth of the organization Assists in evolving high performance teams Infuses new blood into the organization Enhances ability for execution New thoughts, ideas, and hence, more innovation and creativity at work. Knowledge of best practices from across the industry is brought in. It is also an opportunity to induct employees at a lower cost with fresh skills

and competencies aligned to the current need of business

The following can also be considered as the benefits of attrition

If all employees stay in the same organization for a very long time, most of them will be at the top of their pay scale which will result in excessive manpower costs.

When certain employees leave, whose continuation of service would have negatively impacted productivity and profitability of the company, the company is benefited.

New employees bring new ideas, approaches, abilities & attitudes which can keep the organization from becoming stagnan

ATTRITION RATES

The attrition rates in different sectors

Sector Attrition Rate

  FMCG 17

  Manufacturing 20

  Capital Goods 23

  Construction 25

  Non Voice IT/ITES 25

  IT - ITES 27

  Telecom 30

  Pharmaceuticals 32

  Bio Technology 35

  Services 40

  Financial 44

  Aviation 46

  Retail 50

  Voice – Based IT/ITES 50

INDUSTRY PROFILE

Introduction

Retail means selling goods and services in small quantities directly to customers. Retailing consists of all activities involved in marketing of goods and services directly to consumer for their personnel family and household use.

The Indian retailing industry is becoming intensely competitive, as more and more payers are Vying for the same set of customers. The major retail players are Pantaloon Retail, Shoppers Stop, Reliance, etc.,

Retailing is one of the biggest sectors and it is witnessing revolution in India. The new entrant in retailing in India signifies the beginning of retail revolution. India's retail market is expected to grow tremendously in next few years. According to AT Kearney, The Windows of Opportunity shows that Retailing in India was at opening stage in 1995 and now it is in peaking stage in 2006. India's retail market is expected to grow tremendously in next few years. India shows US$330 billion retail market that is expected to grow 10% a year, with modern retailing just beginning. India ranks first in 2005. In fact, in 2005 and 2006, India is the most compelling opportunity for retailers, because now India is in peaking stage. Sector details

1. Introduction to retail industries.2. Retail word is derived French word retailer means to cut off a piece.3. Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services to the final customer for personnel or non-business use.4. Supermarket is a retailing of a wide variety of consumer products under one roof, ample stock, stock of several brands & extended business hours.

History of retailing

Retail concept is old in India. World’s first departmental store started in Rome. Today’s kirana stores are based on Manusmriti & Kautilya’s

arthshastra.Haats, Melas, Mandis & door to door salesmen are traditional Indian retail.

Vishal Mega Mart is a retail sector, which is providing good quality of products in very reasonable price than its competitors. Retailing and wholesaling consist of many organizations designed to bring goods and services from the point of production to the point of use.

Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services directly to final consumers for their personal, non-business use. Retailers can be classified in terms of store retailers, non-store retailing, and retail organizations.

Store retailers include many types, such as specialty stores, department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, superstores, combination stores, hypermarkets, discount stores, warehouse stores, and catalog showrooms. These store forms have had different longevities and are at different stages of the retail life cycle. Depending on the wheel-of-retailing, some will go out of existence because they cannot compete on a quality, service, or price basis.

Non-store retailing is growing more rapidly than store retailing. It includes direct selling (door-to-door, party selling), direct marketing, automatic vending, and buying services. Much of retailing is in the hands of large retail organizations such as corporate chains, voluntary chain and retailer cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, franchise organizations, and merchandising conglomerates. More retail chains are now sponsoringDiversified retailing lines and forms instead of sticking to one form such as the department store.

Retailers, like manufacturers, must prepare marketing plans that include decisions on target markets, product assortment and services, store atmosphere, pricing, promotion, And place. Retailers are showing strong signs of improving their professional management and their productivity, in the face of such trends as shortening retail life cycles, new retail forms, increasing intertype competition, and polarity of retailing, new retail technologies, and many others.

Wholesaling includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services to those who are buying for the purpose of resale or for business use. Wholesalers help manufacturers deliver their products efficiently to the many retailers and industrial users across the nation. Wholesalers perform many functions, including selling and promoting, buying and assortment-building, bulk-breaking, warehousing, transporting, financing, risk bearing, supplying market information, and providing management services andCounseling. Wholesalers fall into four groups. Merchant wholesalers take possession of the goods and include full-service wholesalers (wholesale merchants, industrial distributors) and limited-service wholesalers (cash-and- carry wholesalers, truck wholesalers, drop shippers, rack jobbers, producers' cooperatives, and mail-order wholesalers). Agents and brokers do not take possession of the goods but are paid a commission for facilitating buying and selling. Manufacturers' and retailers' branches and offices are wholesaling operations conducted by non-wholesalers to bypass the wholesalers. Miscellaneous wholesalers include agricultural assemblers, petroleum bulk plants and terminals, and auction companies.

Wholesalers, too, must make decisions on their target market, product assortment and services, pricing, promotion, and place. Wholesalers who fail to carry adequate assortments and inventory and provide satisfactory service are likely to be bypassed by manufacturers. Progressive wholesalers, on the other hand, are adapting marketing concepts and streamlining their costs of doing business.

PROFILE OF THE COMPANY

Future Group, led by its founder and Group CEO, Mr. Kishore Biyani, is one of India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across

the consumption space. While retail forms the core business activity of Future Group, group subsidiaries are present in consumer finance, capital, insurance, leisure and entertainment, brand development, retail real estate development, retail media and logistics.

Led by its flagship enterprise, Pantaloon Retail, the group operates over 16 million square feet of retail space in 73 cities and towns and 65 rural locations across India. Headquartered in Mumbai (Bombay), Pantaloon Retail employs around 30,000 people and is listed on the Indian stock exchanges. The company follows a multi-format retail strategy that captures almost the entire consumption basket of Indian customers. In the lifestyle segment, the group operates Pantaloons, a fashion retail chain and Central, a chain of seamless malls. In the value segment, its marquee brand, Big Bazaar is a hypermarket format that combines the look, touch and feel of Indian bazaars with the choice and convenience of modern retail.

In 2008, Big Bazaar opened its 100th store, marking the fastest ever organic expansion of a hypermarket. The first set of Big Bazaar stores opened in 2001 in Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

The group’s speciality retail formats include supermarket chain – Food Bazaar, sportswear retailer - Planet Sports, electronics retailer - eZone, home improvement chain - Home Town and rural retail chain, Aadhaar, among others. It also operates popular shopping portal

Future Capital Holdings, the group’s financial arm provides investment advisory to assets worth over $1 Billion that are being invested in consumer brands and companies, real estate, hotels and logistics. It also operates a consumer finance arm with branches in 150 locations.

Other group companies include, Future Generali, the group’s insurance venture in partnership with Italy’s Generali Group, Future Brands, a brand development and IPR company, Future Logistics, providing logistics and

distribution solutions to group companies and business partners and Future Media, a retail media initiative.

The group’s presence in Leisure & Entertainment segment is led through, Mumbai-based listed company Galaxy Entertainment Limited. Galaxy leading leisure chains, Sports Bar and Bowling Co. and family entertainment centres, F123. Through its partner company, Blue Foods the group operates around 100 restaurants and food courts through brands like Bombay Blues, Spaghetti Kitchen, Noodle Bar, The Spoon, Copper Chimney and Gelato.

Future Group’s joint venture partners include, US-based stationery products retailer, Staples and Middle East-based Axiom Communications.

Future Group believes in developing strong insights on Indian consumers and building businesses based on Indian ideas, as espoused in the group’s core value of ‘Indianness.’ The group’s corporate credo is, ‘Rewrite rules, Retain values.

In 2008, Big Bazaar opened its 100th store, marking the fastest ever organic expansion of a hypermarket. The first set of Big Bazaar stores opened in 2001 in Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

In vadapalani big bazzar store 160 employees are working.Big Bazaar is not just another hypermarket. It caters to every need of a family. Where Big Bazaar scores over other stores is its value for money proposition for the Indian customers. At Big Bazaar, one can get the best products at the best prices that is what they guarantee. With the ever increasing array of private labels, it has opened the doors into the world of fashion and general merchandise including home furnishings, utensils, crockery, cutlery, sports goods and much more at prices that will surprise you. And this is just the beginning. Big Bazaar plans to add much more to complete the shopping experience. Food is the main shopped for category in this store.

PARENT COMPANY:-

Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited, is Indias leading retailer that operates multiple retail

formats in both the value and lifestyle segment of the Indian consumer market.

LINES OF BUSINESS OF THE ABOVE STORE:-

1. E-tailing

2.Food

3.Fashion

4.Home Solution

5.General Merchandise

6.Leisure and Entertainment

7.Wellness and Beauty

OBJECTIVES OF STUDY

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

To understand the factors that influence the employee turnover

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES

To give necessary suggestion based on the findings To list the expectation of the employee from store To know the respondent perception towards Big Bazaar.

NEED FOR THE STUDY

The project helps me to understand how a company’s HR Department tries to improve their business by keeping good relations with employees.

To help organization in reducing the overall costs by reducing replacement costs.

To spread the training costs over the years of employee’s stay in the organization

To helps the HR department of the organization to concentrate on other important things like training, apart from recruitment.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study was conducted from the Vadapalani Big Bazaar employee only. This study focuses on the perception, satisfaction about Big Bazaar,

Chennai. The method and outcome of this study can prove to be of immense help of

similar studies in future.

LIMITATIONS OF STUDY

The survey was limited to the organization; hence the result obtained from

the study may not be universally applicable.

It was difficult to meet all the respondents in the organization.

The respondents were reluctant to answer due to their busy schedule.

Some of the respondents might have answered in a biased manner.

The method used for data collection is by using questionnaire and the main draw back of this method is the chance of biases is high.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Employee retention is a process in which the employees are encouraged to remain with the organization for the maximum period of time .Employee retention is beneficial for the organization as well as the employee.

The biggest challenge faced by an organization today is not one of growth or profitability. Rather, it is about retaining one's best employees. Average organizations spend more money on recruitment and replacement programs, while good organizations invest in employee retention.

Employees today are different. They are not the ones who don’t have good opportunities in hand. As soon as they feel dissatisfied with the current employer or the job, they switch over to the next job. It is the responsibility of the employer to retain their best employees.

Greg Smith says “Successful organizations realize employee retention is integral to sustaining their leadership and growth in the marketplace. Becoming an Employer of Choice by retaining high-caliber employees in today's labor market should be the highest priority”.

“Any attrition in any form is bad for an organization. It means that a wrong choice was made at the beginning" says NR Ganti Chairman and MD, SQL Star International.

Studies from the Gallup organization show that employees who have an above-average attitude toward their work will generate 38 percent higher customer satisfaction scores, 22 percent higher productivity, and 27 percent higher profits for their companies.

Bill Erickson reviews “Failure to Employee Retention will result in Costs Due to a Person Leaving, Recruitment Costs, Training Costs, Lost Productivity Costs, Loss of Company Knowledge, Quality employees and New Hire Costs”.

High attrition implies that certain necessary skills are vulnerable or are not present due to employees being lost" says Vikram Bhardwaj, Managing Director, and Redileon

A survey from NAUKRI says Employees do not leave an organization without any significant reason. There are certain circumstances that lead to their leaving the organization. The most common reasons can be:

No growth opportunities: No or less learning and growth opportunities in the current job will make candidate’s job and career stagnant.

Lack of appreciation: If the work is not appreciated by the supervisor, the employee feels de-motivated and loses interest in job.

Lack of trust and support in coworkers, seniors and management: Trust is the most important factor that is required for an individual to stay in the job. Non-supportive coworkers, seniors and management can make office environment unfriendly and difficult to work in.

Stress from overwork and work life imbalance: Job stress can lead to work life imbalance which ultimately many times lead to employee leaving the organization.

Compensation: Better compensation packages being offered by other companies may attract employees towards themselves.

New job offer: An attractive job offer which an employee thinks is good for him with respect to job responsibility, compensation, growth and learning etc. can lead an employee to leave the organization.

Job and person mismatch: A candidate may be fit to do a certain type of job which matches his personality

Job is not what the employee expected to be: Sometimes the job responsibilities don’t come out to be same as expected by the candidates. Unexpected job responsibilities lead to job dissatisfaction

ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS

The employees always assess the management values, work culture,work practices and credibility of the organization. The Indiancompanies do have difficulties in getting the businesses and retain itfor a long time. There are always ups and downs in the business. Whenthere is no focus and in the absence of

business plans, non-availabilityof the campaigns makes people to quickly move out of the organization.

WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Working environment is the most important cause of attrition.Employees expect very professional approach and internationalworking environment. They expect very friendly and learningenvironment. It means bossism; rigid rules and stick approach will notsuit the call center. Employees look for freedom, good treatment fromthe superiors, good encouragement, friendly approach from one andall, and good motivation.

JOB MATTERS

No doubt the jobs today bring lots of pressure and stress is high. The employees leave the job if there is too much pressure on performance or any work related pressure. It is quite common that employees are moved from one process to another. They take time to get adjusted with the new campaigns and few employees find it difficult to get adjusted and they leave immediately. Monotony sets in very quickly and this is one of the main reasons for attrition. Youngsters look jobs as being temporary and they quickly change the job once they get into their own field. The other option is to move to such other process work where there is no pressure of sales and meeting service level agreements (SLA). The employees move out if there are strained relations with the superiors or with the subordinates or any slightest discontent.

SALARY AND OTHER BENEFIT

Moving from one job to another for higher salary, better positions and better benefits are the most important reasons for attrition. The salary and offered from MNC companies in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai have gone up very high (Rs 15000 to Rs 18000 per month) and it is highly impossible for Indian companies to meet the expectation of the employees. The employees expect salary revision once in 4-6 month sand if not they move to other organizations.

PERSONAL REASONS

The personal reasons are many and only few are visible to us. Theforemost personal reasons are getting married or falling in love orchange of place. The next important personal reason is going forhigher education. Most of the BE, MCA and others appear for GATEexamination or other examinations and once they get cleared theyquickly move out.Health is another aspect, which contributes for attrition. Employees doget affected with health problems like sleep disturbances, indigestion,headache, throat infection and gynecological dysfunction for ladyemployees. Employees who have allergic problems and unable to copewith the AC hall etc will tend to get various other health problems and loose interest to work.

POACHING

The demand for trained and competent manpower is very high.Poaching has become very common. The big companies targetemployees of small companies. The placement agencies have gooddays for doing more business.

The employees with 4-6 months experience have very good confidenceand dare to walk out and get a better job in a week's time. Most of theorganizations have employee referral schemes and this makes peopleto spread message and refer the know candidates from the previous companies and earn too.

EMPLOYEES ADVOCATE

One of the main reasons why employees leave companies is because of problems with their managers. An HR professional can be termed an employee’s advocate and a bridge between top management and employees at all levels. There is a huge gap between professionals and employees in terms of understanding challenges and delivering requirements. HR has not really understood the problems associated with employees’ careers and jobs. The company’s overall plans and strategies also depend on HR professionals as they voice employees’ problems and requirements. The HR department should have genuine interest in the employees’ welfare…it irresponsible for making sure that their expectations are met. By doing this it is easier to meet the company’s business targets

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

According to Pauline V.Young a research design is “the logical and systematic planning and directing of a piece of research “.A research design is the arrangement of condition for collection relevance to the research purpose with economy in procedure .It is the conceptual structure within which research is conducted; it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data.

The type of research design to be used for this study is Descriptive research design

DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH DESIGN

A descriptive study involves formulating the objectives of study, defining the population and selecting a sample, designing the method of data collection and analysis of the data and results. Descriptive studies aim at portraying accurately the characteristics of particular group or situation. Descriptive research is used to obtain information concerning the current status of the phenomenon to describe “what exists “with respect to variables or condition in a situation. Thus here the researcher has used the descriptive research design to understand the current status of the employee ‘it is concerned with the description of characteristics of the subject under study.

UNIVERSE

The entire items under consideration in any field of enquiry constitute a”universe”or”population”.The universe may be either finite or infinite. The used here is finite universe in which the number of items in determinable. An infinite universe is that in which the number of items are not determinable.

SAMPLING METHOD

The chosen method of sampling is random sampling

RANDOM SAMPLING

A sample is a subject chosen from a population for investigation. A random sample is one chosen by a method involving an unpredictable component. Random sampling can also refer to taking a number of independent observations from the same probability distribution, without involving any real population. The sample usually is not a representative of the population from which it was drawn— this random variation in the results is known as sampling error. In the case of random samples, mathematical theory is available to assess the sampling error. Thus, estimates obtained from random samples can be accompanied by measures of the uncertainty associated with the estimate. This can take the form of a standard error, or if the sample is large enough for the central limit theorem to take effect, confidence may be calculated.

TOOL FOR DATA COLLECTION

The tool to be made use for data collection is questionnaire and exit interview .In this method a questionnaire is sent to the persons concerned with request to answer the questionnaire. A questionnaire consists of a number of questions printed or typed in a definite order or set of forms.

SAMPLE SIZE:

The sample size for this study is taken as 150 for the interview and issue

questionnaires.

DATA COLLECTION METHOD

The work does not end by framing the design. It is necessary to acquire the

various details. The collected information is aimed at getting a truthful & clear result.

The results can be further analyzed selection of best possible method for collecting

data becomes very vital for this type of study

Data is basically collected in two methods. They are classified in two years.

Primary data

Secondary data

PRIMARY DATA

This data helps in collecting first hand information

SECONDARY DATA:

These are data which were already collected & available for other purposes

then for solving the problem that is undertaken.

COLLECTION OF PRIMARY DATA

There are several methods of collecting primary data in descriptive research.

OBSERVATION METHOD

INTERVIEW METHOD

THROUGH QUESTIONNAIRES