The company that settles you (Down)

Workers - or, if you want to sound supercilious, talent - in the IT industry are having a good churn these days. Good for them. After all, sectors where inter-company employee migration is low tend to become ossified pools of chalta haickers where the emolument ceiling becomes indistinguishable from the basement floor. But spare a thought for IT employers.

Keeping up with the constant Brownian motion of members in the work pool is tough. Infosys' voluntary attrition rate over the last year has been 27.7% at March-end. Tata Consultancy Services' situation on the HR front is no better. This is the state of the biggies. How smaller IT companies are facing a bull run in the labour market is anybody's guess. In this landscape, enter Sri Mookambika Infosolutions (SMI), the Madurai-based tech solution company with more than 750 employees. It has managed to maintain a 10% attrition rate even with the manthan on outside. How? By offering its employees free matchmaking services for marriage and a salary hike if they get married. And this has reportedly been working like a charm of mangalsutra proportions.

The correlation between marriage and settling down has been well-established. But SMI's talent - in the true sense of the word - has been to be part of that settling down process for its employees. In the process, tying two sets of knots.