The 20 best IT employers in India

Global search engine giant Google was voted as their dream company by Indian software professionals in the latest annual Best Employer survey conducted by Dataquest-IDC India, with one in eight professionals putting it at the top of the league, much ahead of other global software giants like Oracle, Accenture, Microsoft and IBM.

However, back home the global economic slowdown of the last 18 months has perceptibly changed the attributes of an ideal company with three out of four respondents treating job security and stability as the key attribute almost bracketed with growth opportunities and career development.

This is first year when flexibility of work hours emerges among Top 3 attributes of an ideal company.

Attributes like 'work life balance' and 'flexible working hours (60%), positive work environment (52%) and strong employer company image (50%) were among the top 5 attributes of an ideal company according to participating software employees.

In all 3160 professionals from 36 IT companies were polled for this two stage survey conducted between June and August 2010.

The glamour of overseas posting among software professionals has lost its shine with just two out of five professionals considering posting abroad as an important factor in ranking their employer as an ideal company.

The Dataquest-IDC best employer top 20 list is made up of a mix of firms Indian IT firms and the India development centres of software multinationals.

The employee attrition rate for the top 20 companies at 13% is better than the attrition rate of 17% recorded last year.

So click NEXT to check out which are India's top 20 IT employers . . .

1. Tata Consultancy Services

TCS leads in training, least employee turnover, women make up one third of its workforce.

For India's biggest IT firm, TCS, topping the Dataquest-IDC best employer list was a cakewalk with the attrition rate down to 11.8%, the lowest in the industry.

TCS achieved this feat by continuously investing in competitive compensation, creating a compelling work environment, empowering employees, and, most importantly, people development programs.

Out of an investment of over 1.5 million training days in competency development programs globally, one-fourth of this training effort was delivered through virtual classrooms by TCS. On the gender inclusion front, women employees now make up 30%.

2. HCL Infosystems

Computer hardware pioneer HCL Infosystems managed the top rank across key parameters like salary, appraisals, managing slowdown and training--an achievement in a year of partial revival.

To train successors and to groom the next-in line, HCL rolled out an innovative program -- 'iLead' -- covering all levels.

An employee at HCL is trained for a year to prepare for taking up an elevated role. In addition, three schools for employee development--iLead for leadership development; iLearn for updating technical and domain learnings; and iWin for sales personnel -- were launched.

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3. iGate Global Solutions

In a year of part recession, part recovery, iGate, the software company adopted the mantra of 'no reaction' thereby avoiding pink slips or salary cuts. This helped iGate's employees being among a select set of professionals who felt their jobs were secure.

iGate emerged amongst the top three dream companies and the topmost company when it came to retaining its existing employees. In order to make its employees feel secure about their jobs, the company revamped up two-way communication with them.

The company's 'Fast-Track' program recognizes consistently outstanding performers leading to a lower than industry attrition rate of 5-6%, The company has an impressive 40% women in its work force with plans to take it to 50% in future.

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4. Rolta

Training and rewards kept Rolta India among top 5. A re-work of its HR policy led to induction of talent from across the industry.

The new lateral hires had to be good visionaries and exceptional executioners. By keeping communication channels open the employee communication became a key communication tool at Rolta.

During the downturn, Rolta concentrated on honing the skills of its employees by focussing on hand holding and training, especially for under-performers.

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5. Infinite

The Bengaluru-based company offers infinite dreams and infinite possibilities for its people was visible in the high scores for the supportive work culture that helps employees raise their own performance standards and set benchmarks.

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6. Capgemini India

Capgemini is headquartered in Paris, France and operates in more than 30 countries. It employs 96,000 people in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

In India, Capgemini is over 26,000 people strong and services over 400 clients globally and in the Indian market.

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7. L&T Infotech

L&T Infotech is a global IT services and solutions provider. Its parent company is Larsen & Toubro, a technology, engineering, manufacturing and construction conglomerate, with global operations.

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8. SAS Institute India

SAS Institute India is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS. SAS India operations are headquartered in Mumbai with regional offices in Bengaluru, New Delhi and Pune.

SAS has been in India since 1997 and consists of a strong team of over 350 highly-qualified technology and domain experts helping customers address their business challenges through effective use of Business Intelligence.

Sudipta K Sen is the CEO and managing director of SAS India.

SAS also has an R&D Centre in Pune. The R&D centre in India is a key resource arm for the global SAS community and focuses on R&D and Industry Intelligence Solutions Development.

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9. Tulip Telecom

Tulip Telecom Limited is a data telecom service and IT solutions provider that offers innovative IP based infrastructural solutions to its customers.

Tulip is India's largest MPLS VPN player and has been the front-runner in provisioning and managing multi location wide area networks for various industry verticals.

A public limited company, Tulip is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange in India.

Tulip has been ranked 79 amongst BusinessWorld's India's best performing mid-sized companies.

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10. Synechron

Synechron provides solutions that focus on new ways of doing business combining IT innovation and adoption of the latest technologies, while also leveraging the organization's existing IT assets.

The company works with large global corporations and new generation technology companies to provide services and solutions that implement prudent business and technology strategies in today's dynamic digital environment.

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11. Tavant Technologies

In a year when job cuts became the norm especially in the first half of 2009, a high percentage of employees expressed satisfaction at being paid adequately. However, there was a growing discontentment over salaries not being at par with industry standards.

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12. Sify Technologies

After a year of salary freezes and pay cuts, employees welcomed salary hikes and bigger pay cheques. With Indian IT services companies offering better salary packages, the Indian outfits of MNCs no longer hold the fancy that they used to a few years ago.

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13. MindTree

"Over the years, we have seen 'work-life balance' continuously move up in priority for IT professionals in India. While that indicates growing maturity, it calls for a fundamental shift in the HR policies of employers in an industry that employs over 3 million professionals," says Ibrahim Ahmed, group editor of CyberMedia's flagship journal Dataquest.

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14. Datacraft India

The DQ-IDC Best Employers survey corroborates this fact as the top four employers are Indian entities. The top four best paying companies are again Indian companies and not MNCs.

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15. Virtusa

The companies that ranked high on the HR Score included TCS (1), Tulip Telecom (2), Synechron (3), iGate Global Solutions (4), L&T Infotech (5), Rolta India (6), HCL Infosystems (7), SAS Institute India (8), ADP (9), Infinite (10). The next 10 slot went to Fulcrum World Wide (11), Synygy (12), Pitney Bowes (13), Zensar Technologies (14), Infrasoft Technologies (15), Sybase (16), Infogain India (17), Capgemini India (18), Polaris Software (19) and Patni Computer Systems (20).

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16. Patni Computer Systems

The survey, designed and carried out in two phases, had sixty companies participating in the first phase.

Out of these, thirty-seven companies then short listed for the second round.

The employee survey based on the following parameters: Total employee strength in India; Average tenure of senior management; Total average training; Retention rate; Average salary hike (in percentage).

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17. Sybase

The first shortlist of companies was based on the above parameters that were assigned weightage based on their relative importance.

In the second phase, a large-scale survey was conducted by IDC India among 3,160 employees of the 36 companies (one company opted out).

This questionnaire included 73 statements under parameters like composite satisfaction, company culture, job content/growth, training, salary and compensation, appraisal systems, people, gender inclusivity and managing the slowdown.

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18. Pitney Bowes

Employees were asked to rate each of the statements on a ten-point agreement scale. The respondents filled-in their opinions on the questionnaire in the presence of IDC's trained interviewers and supervisors.

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19. Citrix

The employees were also asked about their salary structure, preferred company in the industry. The employee satisfaction survey covered Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru.

Scores from the HR survey and the Employee Satisfaction survey, calculated separately, were combined to arrive at a composite score. Companies were then given ranks based on the composite scores.

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20. Unisys India

The HR and employee satisfaction score was weighed and indexed on a hundred point score to arrive at DQ-IDC BES score, 2010.

Dataquest and IDC India decided the weights for all parameters in consultation with HR experts from the Industry, and these were used in the survey analysis.

The weights were finalised before the survey, to ensure complete unbiased ranking.