IT, Agile and 90 days notice period
A Chief Minister in one of the state in India was replaced by another in couple of days and it gave rise to a meme on the hidden truth in Indian IT industry.
When CM can resign and get relieved in just 2 days, we are still talking about 60–90 days of notice period in Job.
Open question: Are we more responsible than CM
Indian IT companies claims to be able and contains a good amount of managers, leads and teams working in 100 percent agile models and are excellent in handling changes. Companies have subject matter experts who are driving a large industry into the world of agility. These companies provide the support to small or medium size enterprises to move better in agile world.
But what made these highly agile team not anticipate a plan on the agility when a person exits? Are we really agile when we say that we will take 90 days to adapt this change? And there is one thing which adds fuel to fire is the same companies advocates early joiners, like really?
The answer is, the IT (or the Indian IT) industry is utilizing this notice period as an employee retention program. Since the companies with long notice period prefers early joiners this makes an employee with long notice period unable to get new offers easily.
Now the stated reasons for such a long notice period may be as follows:-
- It takes time to fill your position :- Agreed! But what is the success rate of getting a replacement of a resource within the notice period? 50 percent? No. If it could even be 50 percent, we could call that a success.
- Employee have a dependency :- Though I do not agree with it completely. Managers/Leads are responsible to make IT teams working with zero dependencies. And if there is any, no dependency takes 90 days to get resolved.
Did you know : Talent recruitment team hates this 90 days notice period because, most talent in India take offer from one org and use that offer with another org and jump to third
Above listed reasons were the ones I have heard of, if there is any other too, I do not think that will be logical. IT industries are capable of doing things but not doing this as for these 90 days, they will be billed for the resource. I have seen many instances of a non-billable resources getting waived off from the notice period. For the unknown, IT companies provide man power to foreign clients(mostly US) and charge the client an amount say for example $50 per hour and a resource is allotted to the client for the job. Now there is always a risk associated that if the person leaves early we will have to compromise on this $50 per hour.
One of the latest examples of capabilities of IT industry was showcased during Covid situation was that they went to remote working. In early 2000’s we wanted to bring this work-from-home culture, but IT always said that there are challenges in the model and were reluctant to adopt it. But the day they realize losing their $50 per hour, they switched instantly to the same model and are doing good.
There had been petitions to get the notice period reduced. https://www.change.org/p/it-minister-shri-ravishankar-prasad-90-days-of-notice-period-in-it-and-ites-is-harming-industry-and-needs-to-be-30-days
But nothing is being done in this respect and probably will never be.
Food For Thought?
- Are we really agile when we have 90 days notice period?
- Employee don’t have right to have a smooth Exit?
- Shouldn’t notice period be same throughout industry?
- Do we need an IT all Employee Unions, which may work in welfare of IT Employees?
