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When Vikas Bhasin was looking for a camp manager for his venture Chrysalid Outdoor Learning Centers at Junga, 26 km off Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, he knew it had to be someone who had experience in customer service. His company provides adventure sports opportunities to families, travel groups and corporates looking for outdoor sites for training and team building exercises.

“While I could’ve brought anyone from a big city to the camp, I realized that I needed someone who was familiar with the area,” says Bhasin. He approached the local panchayat for the names of some local boys who had left home for better opportunities. “And that is how I got in touch with Gautam Gurung, who was working at a call center in Gurgaon, in a slightly more glorified position than a security guard,” recalls Bhasin. Gurung had unwillingly left his old parents, wife and a two-month-old baby to work in the metro. He jumped at the opportunity to come back home in Junga and has been with Chrysalid since the camp’s inception in August 2008.

Bhasin was probably lucky. “Or maybe it was my strategy that worked,” he smiles. For, to most entrepreneurs in smaller towns, this is one of the biggest hurdles towards smooth operations—attracting talent and minimizing attrition. The reasons are many. For most people living in small towns, the paucity of ample opportunities to land the job of your dreams, the lack or limitations of career growth, and an aspiration to make it big in a bigger city are some of the more important issues.

Entrepreneurs are constantly struggling with being used as a stop-gap arrangement by employees who stay put, but only until something better comes their way. What makes it all the more challenging is how most companies in larger cities and metros are now recruiting from smaller towns to bring down their own attrition rates.

“The way out is to go for candidates who not only fulfill the competency and attitude criteria, but also have social ties in that town,” advises Amit Dhiman, Assistant Professor, Human Resource Management, IIM, Calcutta. Parents who are dependants, a partner, school-going children, all these add up when a prospective candidate considers joining a firm. Given the right incentives in terms of salary, bonus and perks, there are more chances of such a ‘family man’ sticking to his job, rather than post his resume online.

Local talent also works best with an industry such as media, where local language, knowledge of the place, what the people connect to, their passion and turn-offs are crucial. “For local radio channels and newspapers in places such Kanpur, Indore, Aurangabad, Asansol and so on, we not only look at the communication skills of candidates, but also the languages they can exercise it in,” says P. Geetha, Head, Business Development, FAC Consultant, a Chennai-based recruitment company that specializes in media.

Experts also point out that what works is a “cultural fit” with the organization. Take for instance, DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd. Its seven-year-old agro-business division, Hariyali Kisan Bazaar, is a procurement hub for commodities such as milk in the morning, but also a one-stop-shop for anything a farmer may need—agri inputs, farm implements, financial services, fuel, consumer goods and so on. The company has such centers in several tier I and tier II towns such as Lucknow, Ludhiana, Vijaywada, Indore, Bareilly and Nasik.

“We have positions from area managers and agronomists to store supervisors and fuel vendors,” says Rajendra Mehta, Head, Human Resource, Kisaan Bazaar, “And the most crucial criteria for us is the cultural fit,” he explains.

Someone who is family-oriented, gives equal credence to work-life balance and comes from a middle-class family fits those criteria. “Since most of these jobs are static, it also means that we give areas such as marketing to those single men and women who don’t mind traveling,” he clarifies. Mehta also underlines the importance of letting employees feel that they are well taken care of. “Apart from family get-togethers and incentive schemes with monetary benefits, we include trips to exotic locales such as Goa and Bangkok, something the employee wouldn’t opt for himself,” says Mehta. He says it makes the employees feel taken care of.

“Taken care of” is a phrase Sunil Verghese, Senior Manager, HR, Cholayil Pvt Ltd, goes a distance to prove—literally. Cholayil’s factory in Hardwar, Uttarakhand, manufactures the company’s star performer—Medimix soap. And of the nearly 550 employees in the factory and the regional office, more than half have been brought from South India.

“I didn’t find qualified people in the town and nearby areas and so I had to import people from the south,” Verghese justifies. Most of these employees have moved with their families and have been given fully-furnished houses that come equipped with refrigerators, ACs, coolers and so on. Even their salaries are better than what they would have otherwise got for the same job profile down south. “Perhaps it is some extra expenditure for the company but works in our favor because we are sure about the quality of our product. Strategy-wise, too, it is a master stroke—these people aren’t going anywhere else!

IIM-C’s Dhiman points out that the other way to ensure low attrition rates in small towns is by really asking yourself how much you need highly-qualified people. “Will an engineering diploma work as well as an engineering degree from a premier institute?” says Dhiman, “And if it does, go for the one with the diploma and then train him well to suit your needs.” The suggestion matches with the HR policy of Amit Mittal, Career Launcher’s franchisee owner for six centers in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. “All I look for is a passion for training and one who can deliver in a classroom,” says Mittal.

The other way for him to control attrition is by converting his centers into profit centers—Mittal offers his employees a stake in the center she/he works in. “This way, they feel they’re owners of the company rather than employees,” he says. The strategy not only helps him in keeping the attrition rate low, but also gives the employees an incentive to work hard. He should know—his oldest employee, a graduate just out of college, has been with him for the past nine years. Mittal’s annual turnover? Rs 3.5 crore.

But if you need people for specialized positions and they are tough to find in these small towns, Dhiman’s advice is to look for people who want more freedom when they work. “Such people, although highly qualified and at good positions, stagnate or even get lost in big companies and are often dissatisfied with their jobs,” he says. All they are looking for is more autonomy and an outlet for their creativity. Give it to them.

©Entrepreneur July 2010

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Attrition, employees, HR, metros, talent, towns