The contribution of a global service provider’s Human Resources Information System

(HRIS) to staff retention in emerging markets Comparing issues and implications in six
developing countries

Introduction

Many global IT service providers experience staff turnover to such a degree that it
significantly impacts on their business. In order to control such attrition global IT service
providers use Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). Service providers who
implement an HRIS face several choices, for instance: must it be centralized at the
organization’s global headquarters or supplemented by local adaptions? This is an important
question, since staff turnover in the IT service provisioning business is closely related to the
globalization that shapes the context of this industry as well as that of others. Globalization
has increased labor shortages worldwide (Worldbank, 2007). This holds for IT professionals
too (Carmel and Tjia, 2005; Beulen et al., 2006; Thomson, 2006), a result of the autonomous
increase of the global demand for IT services. IT service providers have been growing
powerfully. Gartner expects worldwide IT outsourcing spending to grow from US$ 225
billion in 2006 to US$328 billion in 2011, reflecting a five-year compound annual growth rate
of 7.8 percent (Hale and Potter, 2007). IDC predicts that the worldwide offshore IT services
market will grow from US$17.2 billion in 2006 to US$37.8 billion in 2011, a five-year
compound annual growth rate of 17.1 percent (Tapper et al., 2007). This increasing global
demand for offshore IT services has resulted in a “war for talent”. Therefore staff retention is
of key importance (Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001; Fisher et al., 2005; Landberg, 2006; Luftman
and Kempaiah, 2007; Robertson, 2007). Of course, staff turnover is not only a negative
phenomenon. Regular changes keep people and positions available and ensure a good fit
between the tasks at hand and the employees’ qualifications (Schneider, 1987). But in the
current market circumstances too much turnover would endanger the continuity of the
services delivered. This is why it is important to limit it by focusing on staff retention.

Another aspect of globalization is that the importance of the BRIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India and China) in IT services provisioning is growing (IDC, 2007). Other Asian,
East European and South American countries are emerging and maturing as well (Overby,
2006).

This paper is structured as follows. First, we look into staff retention: the factors that
determine whether staff is retained and the strategies companies may employ to do so. Then a
definition is presented: what exactly is an HRIS? In the next section, the research question
and methodology are elaborated, and the case study used to answer the research questions is
described. Following that, its results are presented and then, in the next section, discussed.
Finally, the HRIS functionalities that are important to staff retention are summed up, after
which the paper’s conclusions are given.

Staff retention

Studies into staff retention carried out for the US government have shown that
remuneration is one of the reasons for IT professionals to leave their employer – but not their
most important reason (DeMers, 2002; Ressler, 2006). Luftman and Kempaiah (2007) have
found that the same proves to be true for private companies, although they have also pointed
out the fact that in the for-profit world counter-offers are often made to IT professionals who
are considering a move, in order to keep them. But generally, many motives other than
money play a role in IT professionals’ considerations: interesting assignments, growth
perspectives, inspiring managers, training and development opportunities, well-equipped
work locations and flexible working hours, and the chance to work with the newest
technologies (DeMers, 2002; Hayes, 2005; McGee, 2006; Tarasco and Damato, 2006;
Luftman and Kempaiah, 2007).

HR staff have only limited power over employee turnover. They cannot change or
turn back termination decisions taken by individual employees (Baysinger and Mobley,
1983). Nevertheless, Kerr and Slocum (1987) and Kopelman et al. (1990) claim that HR
managers can influence staff retention indirectly by letting organizational culture values do
their work on the company’s HR strategy, including selection and placement policies,
promotion and development procedures, and reward systems. Gelade and Ivery (2003) have
elaborated on the relation between HR management, work climate and organizational
performance. And while these researchers admit there are no clear correlations between these
variables, HR staff do have the responsibility to develop and implement a strategy that aims
to minimize turnover and recruitment costs (Abelson and Baysinger, 1984; Boudreau and
Berger, 1985). The implementation of such a strategy can well be supported by information
technology in the shape of an HRIS.

Globalization has made skilled IT professionals more mobile. This not only means
that non-Westerners will easily move to the West; they may easily return home too.
Especially IT professionals from India tend to return to their home country (Bose, 2006).
Among other things, such trends complicate the challenge of staff retention. A study carried
out by Stephan and Levin (2005), for example, shows that gender differences apply in the IT
branch too: women leaving their company often do not move to another company but stop
working altogether. Marriage and family life play different roles for women and men, which
affects retention. These complexities mean that more is needed than a short-term action plan
if one intends to retain one’s IT professionals. Retention management will have to be
anchored in the company’s HR strategy (Lado and Wison, 1994; Huselid et al., 1997;
Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001). One possible supporting tool is a HRIS (Hussain et al. 2006;
Lepak et al., 2007; Sanchez and Aguayo, 2007). The key element in the support an HRIS
provides for the company’s HR strategy is the availability of information as input for HR-
relating decision making processes. It allows, for example, information to be shared on the
roles that are available for IT professionals, so that the match can be improved between their
jobs and their knowledge, experience and aspirations. In addition, employers should provide
challenging tasks for their IT professionals, rotate assignments and provide opportunities to
work abroad for 24- or 36-month periods. Their HR policies should be caring, involving their
employees’ families. And salaries and related packages should regularly be updated with the
cost of living (Agarwal and Ferratt, 2001; Carmel and Tjia, 2005; Roehling et al., 2005;
Tarasco and Damato, 2006; Lacity and Rottman, 2008). According to one Indian HR
executive, salary is not the solution to retain employees.

In this type of demand market, people connecting to people is the key.

Personally, I believe that at the end of the day people work for people. They don’t
work for Accenture or IBM. It is the people around them that are important. They
work for their manager, their colleagues. They interact with them every day and to
them they are the ones who represent Accenture - not the company’s top managers.
The employee’s direct environment is important, because these people have a direct
influence on them. You must have a good management connection with your people.
That helps. So we have programs to connect to our staff: Town Hall meetings, project
meetings. Some are off-site. This type of thing helps retain your staff. You have to
understand the aspirations of the people, apart from the money.

In this paper we will focus on the contribution of HRISs to staff retention. Service
providers can use an HRIS to make their HR processes more effective and more efficient. An
HRIS can also help improve the way HR officers are provided with the information they
need. Thus, HRISs can contribute significantly to the control of staff attrition.
Human resource information systems

More and more companies use an HRIS, to actively support both their HR
management and their business management (Shrivastava and Shaw, 2004; Hussain et al.,
2006; Lepak et al., 2007). An HRIS may be defined as “the system used to acquire, store,
manipulate, analyze, retrieve and distribute pertinent information regarding an organization’s
human resources” (Tannenbaum, 1990, p. 27). Such systems have always been around, of
course. But since the 1940s, when they consisted of personnel administration and payroll
activities run on sorting and tabulating equipment, they have been extended and modernized
almost beyond recognition. The 1960s saw the introduction of computers in HR departments,
albeit on a very small scale and with limited functionality (DeSanctis, 1986). In the late
1970s Hennessey reported that the increase in complexity due to globalizing companies,
changing legal environments and the growing percentage of white-collar workers created an
increasing demand for HRISs with functionalities that would provide the company’s business
managers with management reports giving them HR information relevant to their needs
(Hennessey, 1979). In the mid-1980s, DeSanctis(1986, p. 15) concluded that “Human
Resource Information Systems (HRIS) have become a major MIS sub-function within the
personnel areas of many large corporations”.

HRIS functionality nowadays includes corporate communication, recruitment,

selection, training, employee opinion survey, compensation, payroll services and employee
verification as well as general information (Ngai and Wat, 2006). Holincheck et al. (2007)
distinguish between administrative applications, talent management applications, workforce
management applications, service delivery applications and workforce analysis and/or
decision support applications. This means a shift has been made from labor-intensive HRM to
technology-intensive HRM (Florkowski and Olivas-Luja ´n, 2006), a transformation that has
been all but simple. Kovach et al. (2002, p. 46) consider “getting the staff to adopt and adapt
to a new system, which is actually a new business process for them” to be the most important
difficulty when an HRIS is implemented. Nevertheless they conclude that HRISs are the only
way to achieve both administrative and strategic advantages.

However, do HRISs also provide the solution to the retention of qualified IT

professionals in the dynamic labor markets that we meet in emerging economies? An HRIS
enables HR specialists to focus on workforce analysis, but simply having more information
does not automatically lead to a better analysis (Roehling et al., 2005). So how can HRISs
make positive contributions to the retention of IT professionals in emerging markets? Is it
desirable to implement globally unified HR functionalities or should local adaptions also be
made? In this paper these questions will be studied for one specific global IT services
provider: Accenture.

Method and procedure

Since the purpose of this research study was to investigate the contribution of a global
IT service provider’s HRIS to staff retention, the appropriate research method was to generate
an “exploratory-descriptive” case study at this company (Yin, 2003). This research method
enables one to elicit data and information from informants with the purpose of building a
theory rather than testing one (Myers and Avison, 2002).

The research was carried out by Accenture itself. Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with net revenues of USD 19.7
billion in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. It is committed to delivering services to businesses and
governments, and employs more than 175,000 people in 49 countries. The author of this
paper is himself an Accenture employee. His position does not include any HR management
responsibility or involvement. In order to carry out his research independently, the author
adopted the role of professional stranger (Ager, 1980), also known as outsider, which
required an “attitude of principled doubting of social self-evidence” (Hitzler, 1988, p. 19).

Research framework

The increase of outsourcing, including offshore outsourcing, makes the management

of dispersed expertise more and more important. Oshri et al. (2007) have identified
“monitoring and expertise development and retention at project and organizational levels” as
the best practice for this purpose. Knowledge management plays an important role here.
Martinsons (1997, p. 40, Table 2) identified six main activities of knowledge-based systems
in human resource management: human resource planning, recruitment and selection, staff
development, performance appraisal, regulatory compliance and benefits administration.
These activities are still relevant today. In this paper’s analysis, they will be coupled with the
functionalities of Accenture’s HRIS application suite. For this purpose, the staff development
and regulatory compliance activities will be merged, since their generic and specific training
components overlap within the context of an HRIS. The recruitment and selection activity
will be not included here, as it is not related to retention management.
 The focus of this paper is on how HRISs can make positive contributions to the
retention of IT professionals in emerging markets. This analysis is carried out per HR
functionality in the six developing countries investigated. Derived from this focus is the
question of whether it is especially global functionality or local adaptions that contribute to
retention management. This research framework is detailed in Figure 1.

Data collection and analysis

To carry out the research done for this paper, sixteen of Accenture’s HR executives
and managers were interviewed in July and August 2007. For these interviews a semi-
structured questionnaire was used and the company’s HR functionalities and their
contribution to retention management were discussed. Specific attention was paid to local
adaptions to globally implemented HR functionalities. The local context was discussed too,
including the labor market situation and the reasons why employees have left Accenture. The
executives and managers interviewed work for the company’s Argentina, Brazil, China,
India, Latvia and Slovakia branches, which means that each of the three emerging continents
was included with two representative countries, as detailed in Table I. All interviewees
themselves originate from these developing countries and hold positions that include
responsibility for staff retention there. The choice for interviewing managers only - and not
employees - was made because the purpose was to investigate HR functionality
implementation. Employees notice only a limited portion of their company’s HRIS’s
functionalities, nor can they provide additional insight into the choice between global systems
and local adaptions. All interviews were held by telephone; they each took an hour and a half
and were taped and fully transcribed. In addition, information available in the public domain,
such as annual reports and newspaper clippings, was reviewed for this study.

The interview transcripts and responses to the questionnaires were studied to identify
the contribution of the Accenture HRIS to staff retention by capturing the ideas and
phenomena described by interviewees. Data analysis was conducted in three stages:
preliminary analysis, formal analysis and final data analysis (Rubin and Rubin, 1995, p. 226).
Of these, the preliminary analysis was already carried out during the interviews. Afterwards,
the information obtained was subjected to an interpretative analysis in order to structure it so
that it would match the research question. This meant coupling theoretical concepts with the
empirical data collected. The consolidated conclusions of all sixteen interviews were then
used as input for the final data analysis, as detailed in this paper. This was an iterative process
that relied on the use of “descriptive”, “interpretative” and “pattern” codes (Miles and
Huberman, 1994, p. 57).

Case study description

Accenture was established in the late 1940s as Arthur Anderson & Co. It transformed
into an independent business unit called Anderson Consulting in 1989. The decision to
rename the company Accenture was taken in August 2000 and became effective per 1
January 2001 (Accenture, 2005). The company focuses on service delivery, both in the field
of management consulting and that of technology and outsourcing services. Each division has
its own characteristics. Management consulting work usually has short contract periods and is
by definition carried out on the clients’ board and senior management level. Technology and
outsourcing services are delivered with much longer contract periods: 36 months is not
unusual for outsourcing contracts, nor is 12 to 18 months for the implementation of an IT
system. Of course, this has consequences for the HRIS needed.
 This study focuses on the HRIS of the company’s technology and outsourcing
services branch, since that is where most growth has taken place in emerging markets. Also,
Accenture plans to achieve its future growth especially in this area. The biggest difficulty in
realizing these growth objectives is retaining its staff – a problem much greater than that of
recruiting new employees. Says the Indian HR executive: “Accenture India processes about
40,000 CVs every month. [...] We have industrialized the entire process of making offers, up
to senior manager level. Only at senior executive level will we look at it more flexibly.
Recruiting is relatively repeatable and predictable.” Much the same came from his
Argentinian, Brazilian and Chinese colleagues. In these countries Accenture has more than a
thousand employees working in technology and outsourcing services. As in India, size has
forced them to industrialize their recruiting process. In countries where the operation is
smaller, however, recruiting does require attention if the company’s growth targets are to be
met. According to the Latvian HR executive, recruiting is “not easy, to be honest.” And her
colleague adds: “Accenture was only established in Latvia 5 years ago. We now have around
280 people.” Their smaller size makes Accenture less visible in Latvia and Slovakia, which
renders recruiting new staff more difficult. All national subsidiaries do of course profit from
Accenture’s international reputation. According to the Indian HR executive, people join
Accenture because it is:

[...] a global brand, and we are not new in India. [...] Our name is well known in the
market. [...] And people believe that because we are a large global organization, we get
better engagements. Our engagements are indeed very large, with end-to-end service delivery
responsibility.
 Unambiguous numerical data on labor markets and the pressure on them is hard to
come by in the countries investigated for this paper. Staff turnover is difficult to assess.
Generally, the demand for qualified IT professionals seems to be greater than the number of
them that is available (IDC, 2007; Worldbank, 2007; Dutta and Mia, 2008; Johnson, 2008).
This puts the market under pressure. IT professionals who consider taking a new job often
have a choice of several positions. Labor market flexibility increases quickly, and not only in
countries such as India (Bose, 2006) and China (Mohapatra et al., 2007), but in Brazil
(Cavalcanti et al., 2008) and Argentina (Barraud and Calfat, 2008) too. Even in new
European Union members such as Slovakia and Latvia flexibility increases (Pridham, 2008),
a development much influenced by the positive effect of their admittance to the Union on the
potential for information technology export to other member states.

Results

The most important cause of staff turnover is the growth of other companies,
especially in emerging economies. The Chinese HR executive commented: “Accenture was
the first multinational company in Dalian. So we could recruit people with seven years of
experience. But after a year, when other multinational companies came to Dalian, they left
Accenture.” Newly established companies need experienced staff to make a flying start. Such
experienced employees must be recruited from the local labor market, which influences the
staff retention of the companies already established there. It is exactly like this that Accenture
India grew from 200 employees in 2001 to more than 38 thousand in 2007. The Indian HR
executive explained:

There are differences between the hiring strategies of purely Indian companies like
Infosys or Wipro and those of IBM or Accenture. Some 70 percent of Accenture’s recruits are
experienced people, while 30 percent of them are drawn straight from campus. Purely Indian
companies have a reversed mix: about 30 percent with work experience and 70 percent
straight from campus.
Companies in emerging markets must therefore arm themselves against the attraction
of their competitors if they are to realize their growth targets.

Accenture, too, faces employee turnover. To what degree such a phenomenon

happens, the interviewees will not disclose since this is considered sensitive information in
the company’s competitive environment. They were willing to provide qualitative
information, however. The most striking similarity between their six countries is that fact that
there is much more turnover among employees with less than five years’ experience than
among those who have more. And in all six countries remuneration and career opportunities
are the most important reasons to leave the company. Regrettably, the research material
offers no basis on which to distinguish between men and women or between IT staff types
such as new graduates and experienced professionals. Some other insights were gained,
however – for instance on the short-term outlook shown by young professionals in Argentina.
The national HR manager explained:

Although most of them say they are very happy working here, salary increase is their
most important focus. They are young and have nothing to lose. They don’t take into
consideration the risks involved in making a change to a smaller company that is less stable
and lacks training programs. They think of today only.
In Brazil, more or less similarly, getting better training opportunities proved not to be
a key incentive for leaving Accenture either, at least as perceived by the interviewees from
that country. By contrast, in other countries it was found that busy schedules working for
clients, which made it difficult for employees to actually follow the training programs they
had been assigned to, was a reason to leave the company. No explanation has been found for
this discrepancy yet. Finally, it turns out there are important differences between the
countries with respect to the urge of their employees to work with the latest technology.
Doing so was an important retention motive in all countries except China. This, too, has yet
to be explained, but perhaps the dominance of legacy applications in the portfolios of Chinese
service providers plays a role.

HRIS system conditions

As we have seen, HRISs can facilitate retention management. But when can an HRIS
be considered successful? Haines and Petit (1997, p. 263, Figure 1) researched the conditions
for successful HRISs and found three items to be the most important: the competences of the
HR manager (“individual/tasks”), the way in which the HR department has been organized
(“organizational”) and the application itself (“system”). They also note that “user information
satisfaction’ is a consequence of the HRIS” success and causes it to really be used. To which
degree does Accenture meet the eleven system conditions identified in Haines and Petit’s
model? An assessment is presented in Table II. The eleven system conditions are used there
as a framework to describe Accenture’s HRIS. In turn, the descriptions provide a better
insight for the analysis of the HRM activities and the functionalities of the Accenture HRM
application suite with respect to retention management, as detailed in Table III.
HRM activities and Accenture’s HRIS

For the purpose of retention management, the following HRM activities are most
important: human resource planning, staff development, performance appraisal and
compensation and benefits administration. These activities will be analyzed in the following
sections of this paper. In Table III the link is made between them and the Accenture HRIS
application suite. Most applications are quite known in the HR practice so they will be
described here in short. Celebrating Performance is an application that enables business
managers to reward professionals extra. The budget available to do so depends on managers’
position within the organization. MyHoldings registers the stocks held by Accenture
employees and facilitates their transactions. It also enables the company to offer its
employees stocks against reduced rates, and to reward exceptional performance with extra
stocks.

The interviews also touched on the cost effectivity of Accenture’s HRIS, which was
perceived as satisfactory, especially because of its high degree of integration and its global
functionalities. The Indian executive summarized this opinion as follows: “Service providers
should take an industrialized approach, combining human effort and fact-based management.
Closely monitoring human efforts pays off. [...] A highly standardized and integrated HR
application portfolio supports retention management as there are hardly any differences per
country. It also lowers the cost-to-serve of the HR application portfolio.”

Human resource planning

Human resource planning is an important aspect of retention management since it

allows the company to assign employees to work in a manner that suits their development.
Job rotation is important here: every employee is given a new role every 18 or 24 months.
And of course, care is taken of their professional development and growth in the meantime
too. In doing so, Accenture tries to match the employee’s personal preferences. The HR
executive from Argentina confirmed this:

We try to know our people’s preferences. When we staff a project we always take
these into consideration. If people ask for a change we try to give them one, for example by
offering them work in another part of the company. But sometimes the nature of their work
makes it very difficult to find another option, something that would suit their needs better. In
such cases people often leave Accenture.
In this respect, Argentina proved no different from the other countries investigated.
Another important aspect in scheduling is the distance between work and home. There are
major differences between the countries in this field. In India, for example, working on other
locations and moving abroad for work offers status. Not so in China, where only junior
employees are willing to relocate. Once Chinese IT professionals have established themselves
somewhere, they are very reluctant to move. Most other countries are rather more like China
than India. But even in India the employees’ social environment exerts some pressure on
them to find a job near their home town ultimately. Says the Indian HR executive: “Therefore
Accenture has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.”

In their weekly scheduling calls the company’s HR and business managers confer on
the assignment of their people. They establish estimates of the future requirements of each
client and decide which employees will be used to staff each project. The MyScheduling tool
enables these managers to take account not only of each employee’s availability but of their
competences, their agreed professional development and their experience. Using this tool,
these managers can do their work decisively. For these weekly scheduling activities, the HR
managers have more information available than only that directly concerning employees and
their availability. A Chinese HR executive explained:

We can use My Scheduling to obtain information about projects anywhere, and

managers in other locations can look into our staff and their re ´sume ´s too. We can assign
our resources to projects outside China, rather than to China Delivery Center projects only.
Actually, we only use MyScheduling to see project information from other locations and to
show our resources to managers working in other locations.
This HRIS functionality is considered very important by the interviewees, especially
since increasing numbers of global engagements require staffing. These can be used for staff
retention purposes. Brazil’s general HR Manager explained: “It is important for us to be able
to offer our employees ‘more interesting assignments” and “better growth perspectives”, and
the HRIS helps us to do so.’ Not all countries find this such an important feature, however;
the Latvian HR department, for instance, did not seem to value it so highly. The difference
can perhaps be explained by the larger size of the Brazilian subsidiary as well as its higher
level of maturity.

Staff development & regulatory compliance

Supporting employees in realizing their professional development targets is the aim of

the education and training tooling. As such, it contributes significantly to retention
management. This was the view expressed by all interviewees. Globally standardized
curricula for defined organizational profiles are offered through the company’s HRIS. This
means that employees who have taken such training courses can be assigned to Accenture
engagements in other locations than their home countries too. They become more
exchangeable and their training and development opportunities are improved. The Latvian
Country HR Manager believed that “the training functionality in the HRIS contributes
positively to retention management”. This does not mean that there are no differences
between the countries. In fact, for every country Accenture has made their own standard
curriculum available that trains people for specific local roles. And every country can add
local training courses of it own. All these functionalities are united into MyLearning.
Employees use a web interface to sign up for training (both in classrooms and computer-
based), and they are scheduled for them and notified of their scheduling through this interface
as well. In addition, the application is coupled to the MyPerformance application, through
which the agreements made with every employee regarding their personal development can
be monitored.

One aspect in which there are differences between the various countries is in their
preference for classroom or computer-based training. Classroom training is preferred
everywhere, but in China. The local HR executive explained:

All courses are in English, and while the Chinese are of course quite capable of
learning English, it takes extra time. It is more difficult for them than for, for instance, people
from India. And if the language is a barrier, it is harder to understand the content too. It
simply takes them longer. Therefore they like to have more training online before taking class
room training: to make sure they understand the content.”
 The Indian branch is the only subsidiary that sends its employees abroad regularly to
take classroom training courses. For all other subsidiaries this is too expensive, so they send
only their management-level high potentials. The Argentinian HR manager explained:

Very few of our people train abroad. It is very costly for us to send people elsewhere,
so it really isn’t an option in most cases. Some travel to Brazil, since it is relatively close by,
but sending people to Europe or the USA is just too expensive. We do this only for some
people at management level, to acknowledge that person’s value to us, but even at that level it
isn’t for everyone.
Labor shortages may, however, change this situation in the longer term.

Benefits administration

All interviewees agreed that remuneration is an important factor in retention

management. In most of the countries studied, people who left the company often did so to
move to its competitors because they were offered higher salaries. But money is not the only
reason for this phenomenon. In Argentina, for example, the situation is slightly different. Its
HR executive explained:

The most important aspect here is salary, compensation. But for many this argument
is followed closely by the nature of their work or its location. We have seen people leave who
wanted to continue to work in a systems environment, but in another town. Others leave to
start work in a completely different field, or to start their own business.”
With respect to remuneration, Accenture’s Chinese subsidiary had an additional
challenge to overcome. “Many international companies use only one single salary scale for
the whole of China,” the Chinese HR executive explained, “even though salaries in for
example Shanghai are normally 20 to 30 percent higher than in Dalian. This distorts the labor
market. It means we have to put in much effort to retain our people.” Because of such
situations, Accenture takes local salary differences into consideration when determining its
sourcing strategy and scheduling process. “Our solution is to recruit in Shanghai for project
staffing, and in Dalian for the lower-cost employees needed for maintenance and some long-
term contracts only”, the executive continued. Where money was the primary reason for
leaving the firm, various solutions have been implemented in order to cope with high attrition
levels. Long-term bonuses, for example, are often used in India to retain employees for their
engagements. The country’s HR executive told us how this practice was implemented:

Such bonuses are related to various milestones along the contract period of long-term
outsourcing deals, with the intention of keeping our staff from rolling off the project. For
long-term projects, bonuses represent about 5 percent of the payroll budget.
 Bonuses are always paid together with the employee’s regular salary payments. Then
there are Accenture’s tools Celebrating Performance and MyHoldings. These global
applications contribute significantly to the company’s retention of its employees. Celebrating
Performance allows the company to give “credit points” to employees whose performance
has been above expectation. It is used especially in developing countries, since these credit
points are worth more there than in the West. Another advantage of this HRIS functionality is
that it can be used at any time of the day. An HR manager from Argentina commented on
Celebrating Performance:

Personally, I like it because I think it’s a very good way to motivate people. They
don’t have to wait until their evaluation meetings or for their managers’ regular feedback
moments to get recognition for their work attitude or whatever it is that their supervisors
want to applaud. For me it’s really good. We are helping each other use it and do our best to
motivate people to do so too.
The application now functions well, but it had a difficult start because its intended use
had not been well communicated about. MyHoldings facilitates the administrative processing
of stock sales by the company’s employees. Since employees get special rates when they buy
stocks, many consider this a valuable fringe benefit that influences the way they feel about
working for the company. There are no differences between the countries investigated here
with respect to how such benefits are perceived.

Performance appraisal

A central role in performance appraisal is played by career counselors. For the

purpose of our analysis, performance appraisal could be divided into two elements:
performance management and talent management. Every employee has his own counselor,
who supports and coaches them in determining and realizing their individual objectives.
These counselors are the employees’ first point of contact and should represent their interests
vis-a `-vis the company.

Every employee’s individual development objectives are outlined in Accenture’s

MyPerformance application. Latvia’s HR executive considered goal setting “an issue”:
adapting targets once they are laid down is difficult, but considering the dynamics of the tasks
carried out by the company’s employees it must be done. The conclusion must be that the
resulting heightened administrative load for both counselors and employees does not
contribute to staff retention.
 Let us take a closer look at the goal setting process. Once a year, career counselors
discuss every employee’s objectives as part of the company’s global HR process. Agreements
are also made on which training courses the employee should take. One important change
considering development trajectories happened relatively recently: the concept of “up or out”,
which mean that an employee should be promoted or leave, and which had been used for
years, was relinquished. Especially in the case of technology experts this concept often just
did not work, so an alternative way of setting targets was devised. For such specialists,
several development trajectories have been set up. Thus, qualified experts – and especially
those who do not have management ambitions – can be retained and offered a career in a way
that is valuable for both themselves and the company.

Career councilors help their councilees steer their careers. By doing so, they also
increase the employees’ commitment to Accenture and so contribute significantly to staff
retention. Therefore, having career counselors is important. Accenture’s HRIS offers the
functionalities for their work. According to the Indian HR executive, the efforts of their
career counselors are measured too: “At the moment, we a trying to measure our employees’
satisfaction through a survey.” This fits in with the industrialized approach to HR
implemented in India. Accenture China has opted for a positive stimulus:

We have an award for the best counselor. Also, we have an award for innovative
ideas. [... ] We use staff surveys to find out about both: we ask people to vote for the people
they believe are good counselors, and to evaluate innovative ideas to determine their value.
Discussion

This study endeavors to extend the analysis of HRISs beyond their functionalities. We
have found evidence suggesting that some degree of local adaption is required to support
retention management best. This will of course have an impact on the cost effectiveness of
the HRIS. However, to be effective local adaptions are required. So now the question
remains: which factors determine the degree to which local adaptions are needed?

For Human Resource Planning global functionalities are a requirement. They enable
the company to optimize the allocation of their Delivery Center employees in developing
countries to the company’s portfolio of global engagements. An interesting observation in
this respect is the willingness of Indian IT professionals to work abroad. A global system
supports their allocation to on-site engagements in developed countries. Chinese IT
professionals, on the other hand, prefer to work close to their home town – and, in fact,
despite their willingness to work abroad, so do Indians. This is because of their strong family
relations. No such preference has been noted for the other four developing countries
investigated here. One explanation for this could be that it is not such an important issue in
relatively small countries like Slovakia and Latvia. Yet, such an explanation does not support
the case of Brazil and Argentina. Perhaps the difference with China and India is because the
much more intensive exchange and collaboration between national Delivery Centers in these
two countries as compared to the other four.

The most important aspect for staff development and regulatory compliance is the
availability of a standardized system across all Delivery Centers. This requires the
establishment of global HR functions : a globally standardized curriculum of well-defined
organizational roles. At the same time, adding local training courses to the global tool is
critical because such tools reinforce the retention of employees. Especially in the larger
countries, such as Brazil and India, such features are used to a greater degree. For Brazil the
language barrier is an important driver: this subsidiary provides local training in
PortugueseinsteadofEnglish.TheIndiasubsidiaryconsidersitimportanttoaddspecific training for
groups of IT professionals who are allocated to large engagements (of more
than100millionUS$).In fact,it is only India that sends their IT professionals abroad for
training, which is considered an incentive element for the employee.

Benefits Administration includes many other benefits other than just salaries. It is
worthwhile to note that unlike MyHoldings, Celebrating Performance is not linked to the
local price level. The stocks employees can buy are related to their salary, whereas
Celebrating Performance bonus points are totally unrelated to salary. Consequently, bonus
points are worth much more in developing countries than in developed countries. Another
difficulty identified is the difference in salary level within a country. The larger the country,
the more prominent these differences are. The Chinese subsidiary faces major challenges in
this regard as its Delivery Center is located in an area with a relatively low salary level. To
keep its IT professionals, the Chinese subsidiary offers higher salaries which means its staff
earns the same level of salary as colleagues in high-salary regions. In Argentina the problem
is the country’s hyper-inflation, which renders it difficult to keep employees since Accenture
guidelines allow for only one salary adjustment per year.

Regarding Performance Appraisal, HRIS support for performance management

requires substantial administrative effort from both the IT professionals and their managers.
Similarly, career counselors are considered imperative for retention management in all
countries. The Indian subsidiary, for example, has chosen to monitor their career counselors
closely, in order to manage talent based on the counselors’ evaluations. The Chinese
subsidiary has chosen to give periodic awards to the best career counselors.

Analyses results. What are important elements in retention management, by HRIS

functionality?

1) Human resource planning. MySchedulding facilitates the assignment of employees to

work that suits their developments; doing so may include job rotation:
- knowing one’s employees’ preferences
- support working abroad (out of the country); and
- support working close their home town (in country).
2) Benefits administration. Celebrating Performance and MyHoldings contribute to
retention management as they are perceived as part of the remuneration:
- implement alternative incentives, such as Celebrating Performance rewards; .
- facilitate regional differences in salary levels; and .
- facilitate hyper-inflation
3) Staff development and regulatory compliance. MyLearning enables the company to
add local courses to the curriculum of global courses (which includes globally
standardized courses for specific profiles):
- standardize capabilities across Delivery Centers;
- facilitate localization: option to add local training courses to the global tool; and .
- facilitate training abroad as an incentive.
4) Performance appraisal. MyPerformance management is the joint responsibility of
career counselors and managers, and contributes to retention management:
- connecting to employees is of key importance; .
- avoid substantial administrative effort; and
- the role of career counselors is of key importance.

So what have HRISs contributed to the organization’s efforts to control staff

retention? This paper argues that HRISs are useful especially in facilitating retention
management. For this purpose, HRISs have indirect influence on retention management. But
an HRIS can also be a strategic HR tool. HR executives can use HSISs to support their
strategy and talent management programs by considering some specific functionalities, such
as human resource planning, staff development and regulatory compliance, benefits
administration, and performance appraisal.

In the field of human resource planning HRISs contribute to staff retention especially
by enabling organizations to align their employees’ assignments with their personal
preferences and capabilities. We have come across cases where individual wishes and know
how were not matched with assignments as closely as they wanted. In those cases staff
development and training has assisted to bridge such gaps. To ensure the continuous
alignment of demand and supply a staff disposition plan must be formulated on the basis of
the company’s HR strategy. These are multi annual plans in which service providers define in
detail how they intend to fulfill future projects and engagements. A comparison with the
capabilities and ambitions of today’s employees then shows where there may be gaps to fill.
And this can then be done by training one’s current professionals, by flying in employees
from business units abroad and by hiring new staff.

Benefits administration is related to financial compensation. Service providers must

offer competitive terms of employment - and not just salaries but other benefits as well. Many
service providers use benefits in order to retain their staff in the long term, such as shares in
the company, to be released gradually over a three to five-year period, or bonuses paid to
employees only if they have stayed with the company in the next six month. The question is
how professionals assess the balance between current gratification and future prospects.
Rewards for individual or group performance play a major role in such instances, although
individual rewards obviously do not stimulate fellowship among the company’s staff.

n performance appraisal, personal contact with the organization’s professionals is a

key issue. It is really important that employees’ individual expectations are managed well,
but the same holds for the expectations of departments and divisions. The degree to which
objectivity regarding individuals’ performances is properly assessed is very important. And
employees’ sense of being appraised objectively is increased by setting clear objectives
before the assignment, and by assessing their performance together with them afterwards.

These insights should be used to set the HRIS parameters and to implement its
functionalities. When such aspects are implemented, HRIS may indeed contribute
significantly to the optimization of retention management.
Conclusions

On the basis of the data collected at Accenture, we conclude that some functionalities
of HRISs can support the retention of employees. In particular, allocation of staff, scheduling
and training provides additional tools which assist maintaining employees’ satisfaction high
and therefore reduce attrition levels. However, while such a system perceives to be global,
minor local adaptations and in some cases additions of some specific functionalities are
required to improve the match between the firm’s global policy and some local needs.