Importance of Innovative HR Practices in Controlling Employee withdrawal Behaviors

While information technology industry in India is moving ahead with an outstanding velocity, major players in the sector are facing serious issues related to employee attrition. Nowadays, human resource managers are having a tough time in recruiting, training and retaining the talented workforce in a cost effective manner. In the fast paced world where competition is intense, organizations are looking for options to keep the employee morale high to ensure long term survival. By keeping in pace with work environment trends and ensuring that right kind of practices are in place, managers now realize the importance of retaining their highly skilled labor force with valuable technical knowledge. With employee poaching rife in the industry, a small mishap may result in the outflow of innovative and talented employees to the competitor and this may prove to be hazardous for the organization. Even though many researchers have focused on attrition, the retention aspect and its antecedents have been widely ignored. This study concentrates on clearly defining the relationship between innovative human resource practices and employee withdrawal behaviours. The study examines the different existing definitions of the two concepts along with the two dimensions of employee withdrawal behaviors. 350 employees working in 25 IT companies were included in the study and structured questionnaires were used for the purpose of data collection. Results showed that there exists a strong negative impact of innovative human resource practices on employee withdrawal behaviors. Detailed analysis proved the strong negative impact that innovative human resource practices have on job and work dimension of employee withdrawal behaviors. It was also found that work dimension of employee withdrawal behaviors is more affected by innovative human resource practices compared to that of the job dimension.