The first quarter of financial year 2010-11 was one of big hiring by the Big Three of Indian IT — TCS, Infosys and Wipro. They have added 9,100 people between them. Mid-sized and smaller firms have also revved up their people hunting drive, banking on growing business demand. However, even as they are looking at recruiting people, the attrition bug has bitten them despite sops such as salary hikes and promotions.

Company officials and HR consultants say that attrition will take at least until December to settle down to normal levels. And they expect more initiatives, especially non-monetary, to keep employees happy.

“There is a lot of cross-movement happening where personnel from the top 3 are joining tier II and III firms, while people from smaller firms are getting into bigger companies,” according to Amitabh Das, CEO of HR firm Vati Consulting. He added that the people who are moving are typically laterals in the 3-8 years experience bracket, who are getting a 15-25 per cent salary hike.

To give some numbers, attrition levels at end of Q1 was 13.1 per cent, 15.8 per cent and 23 per cent for TCS, Infosys and Wipro, respectively. Things are worse at next level of firms. The attrition level at HCL was 15.7 per cent, 17.8 per cent at MindTree and 21.5 per cent at Patni Computer.

P Thiruvengadam, senior director, human capital advisory services at Deloitte India, said, “We believe the high attrition levels are a temporary situation. With a lot of entry-level employees coming in during next few months, attrition will settle down by end of the year.’’

While most firms have already announced salary hikes, promotions and restricted stock units, industry trackers expect a lot of non-monetary initiatives — or ‘vitamins’ in Das’ words — soon.

These will be soft sops including employee engagement programmes and training, reskill schemes, said Thiruvengadam, adding that some HR managers are presently working on plans where direct supervisors will interact much more with employees.

Something which Wipro Technologies’ senior VP, HR, Saurabh Govil seems to agree on. “Compensation is only one of the levers. There are others that can influence as well – like career growth, job rotation, learning opportunities and higher engagement with senior management. We plan to use all these levers to manage attrition,’’ he said.