Akshay Sales Corporation is a partnership firm established in the year 1994 at Surat, Gujarat. The founder and the CEO of this firm is Mr. Amar Patel. This firm is the distributor, wholesaler, and supplier of all types of wood working, laminate pressing, shoes PU adhesive, and SR rubber adhesive for foam and flooring and mattress. Akshay is one of the top five performers in this type of business out of about 50 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in its region of operations. Being an experienced firm, it also enjoys good competitive edge over others in business. The average turnover of this partnership firm is Rs. 24 crores, whereas the strength of its workforce is 348 employees, including clerical, supervisory, and managerial categories. Akshay is well known for achieving customer satisfaction, ensuring timely delivery, innovating new designs, and honouring commitment to buyers. However, the critical and thorny issue of this firm is the talent management and retention. The human resource management system of Akshay is very much traditional and similar to any typical Indian SME. This firm does not have a specific manager or officer with HR responsibility. Most basic HRM functions such as recruitment and salary fixation are done by the line managers either by themselves or in consultation with the CEO of the firm. In recruitment, it seeks professional competencies among the potential candidates and also offers competitive pay packages. In most cases, the promotion is given to the employees based on the assessment and recommendation of the line managers. As regards the talent management, the major problem for Akshay is in retaining the talented people with the firm for longer duration. This problem persists despite the abundant availability of skilled people in labour market. Akshay offers financial incentives to employees at highly competitive rates as a retention device but without much success. The firm has no record of conducting any form of formal skill training for its employees. This is because the CEO of the firm Mr. Amar Patel strongly believes that employee training can only worsen the problem of talent retention as the well-trained employee is more likely to leave the firm-seeking greener pastures. Consequently, this firm ruled out training as a solution to the problem of high attrition. In Akshay, the attrition related issues remain untamed and continue to affect the plans and future growth prospects of the firm. During temporary recession, it was decided to lay off the people to lessen the wages cost resulting in to draining out the talent people. Remained only were average performers. After recovering from recession, when managers reached out to sacked people offer them to re join, it came out as a shocking surprise to the management that most of them refused to rejoin on some pretext or the other. Now the problem before the, managers and CEO is to employ not only the good people but also to retain them. The organization suffered business as started getting complaints about poor logistics and quality of products. In all likelihood, this issue may worsen in coming times as the competitors may adopt aggressive style with using their ex- workers knowledge about the important business information of Akshay Sales corporation. CEO has asked the managers to come forward with a blueprint to address the problem.

Questions.

1. What is your assessment of the whole situation in Akshay Sales Corporation from HR perspective?

2. According to you what specific steps are to be taken by Akshay to tackle the problem of rising attrition rate?

3. What should be long-term strategy of this firm in terms of HR policy, procedure, and practice?