While TCS Hands Out Pink Slips, HCL Hands Out Exorbitant Perks To Top Performers!

Money can make an employee stay, but never make them loyal. If loyalty is a commodity, then attaching a price tag would be next to impossible. But as all HR’s will tell you, the cost of keeping an old employee will any day cost you lesser than hiring a new, equally qualified one. Keeping the talent pool is of utter importance for every company especially at times when innovation and technological advancement has always seen an upward tangent.

But however in the light of the recent events where in Indian tech companies like TCS, which laid off employees without intimation in the name of restructuring, Yahoo India that cut down it’s engineers etc. Some companies have been able to stay above all this and at a time where employees only wish not to be laid off, these companies gift them a trip abroad! Can’t get better than this!

Though you can’t utterly dismiss the value of money, the value of gifting employees in the name of perks does the company much good. So good that it builds a loyalty in him and the productivity also rises.

Looks like the Indian companies got this point, loud and clear. Recently, HCL announced non-monetary, yet exorbitant perks to some of it’s top performers. When I say exorbitant perks, I mean booking paid holidays to exotic locations and buying Mercs for it’s key personnel. And suddenly the key man insurance policy has become an important thing. So these are what we’d like to call Firms with benefits!

In the recent past HCL has been consistently giving valuable perks to it’s top performers. With an all-expense paid trips abroad, shopping coupons to many e-commerce portals like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Amazon etc and funds to top educational institutions have been adopted. PepsiCo India, which adopted these perky schemes, seems to be happy with the post-performance of the employees.

It’s not just the biggies who seem to be giving away such costly perks, successful startups too have been giving considerable perks to it’s high performers.

In India, very few companies offer non-monetary benefits and perks, however, in most western multinationals, it is a norm. Infact, many of them go to great lengths to ensure that employee comfort is taken care of well. Just to give you a few examples, Google offers it’s employees everything from free unlimited food to onsite harcuts to laundry facilities and dry cleaning services. Companies like Netflix and Virgin Atlantic have offered their companies unlimited paid holidays. Zappos offers pet insurance and napping rooms. These are the aspects that make employees loyal!

The era of fat pay cheques is officially coming to end for many big companies. In Thomas J Watson’s words, “ Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”