Attrition rate – really alarming!
The Finance Minister told the Lok Sabha on Friday that the Attrition rate in the Revenue Department is not all that serious and it is only about one percent. He said that out of the 7007 Group ‘A’ officers in the Income Tax, Customs & Central Excise Departments, only 247 officers have quit the coveted government jobs in the last three years. He also mentioned that the attrition rate in private sector was much higher. Is it that simple? The fact that 247 officers have left and many more will leave once the pay commission announces its much awaited report, should be real cause for concern.
Attrition rate is the highest now. An officer leaving the service was a great news a few years ago – hardly one or two used to leave. But today, an officer in service is often asked the question, “Why are you wasting your time here, when are you leaving?”
Huge cost of training going waste. In the private sector when an employee leaves, normally he is replaced by a better employee. In the private sector, training is almost absent. The IRS officers undergo a full-time 2 year training course and several training courses in India and abroad right through their career. On conservative estimates, the Government must be spending more than a Crore of rupees on training an IRS officer and when he walks away, the replacement is with a raw recruit on whom another Crore of rupees is spent and the cycle goes on. In the private sector, the new recruit is given about fifteen days training and is put straight to the job and if he leaves mid way they get an identical or better replacement. The English aristocracy used to get their daughters educated in the best of convents to make them perfect ladies and then they used to get them married off to pirates. Even one percent attrition is very costly Mr.FM!
Why are the officers leaving? It is not always for better pay packets. The frustrations accumulated over years of impersonal and cruel HR management would drive many sensible ones to suicide – and since they have the other option of better jobs, they choose the latter. The status of being a Government employee, the honour of working for the country and the concept of Government as a stable employer, have all weakened. You talk to any Revenue Service officer; they will complain to you about the ridiculous transfer policy. IAS & IPS officers work mostly in one state for about 30 years and are in the State capital for about 20 years. And you know they are called ‘The All India Service Officers’. The Revenue Service officers are frequently shunted from one corner of the country to another, for no good reason and in the process their family life is badly affected. May be the Indian Revenue Service has the highest number of married officers living single. One of our greatest assets is our family values. It seems Macaulay wanted to introduce English education and western values to break our family ties and he realized that as long as family ties were strong, it is difficult to rule this country. In what Macaulay and the Englishmen failed, the Finance Ministry’s transfer policy has succeeded. During Rajiv Gandhi’s Prime Minister-ship, it was propagated that the Government should keep its employees happy. One reason for the five day week was that the employee would have two days of time with his family and he would come back to work on Monday fresh and happy. The guideline that the husband and wife should be posted in the same place was seriously followed. Incidentally the Minister for Personnel at that time was Shri Palaniappan Chidambaram, the present FM who smiles away the one percent attrition. A very senior officer having his family somewhere in Deep South gets posted to Guwahati, when somebody who is willing to work in Guwahati will get his posting in Chennai – all because the policy says so.
Attrition has its cost. If it is worth spending so much of time, money and energy in recruiting quality officers and then training them at huge costs, it is certainly worth trying to retain them. More than the cost, unfortunately there is a great value loss and invariably the officers who leave are the better ones in the tribe!