Attrition continues to dog retail india

THE retail sector, which led a massive churn in India Inc with its appetite for talent last year, is now in a bind. As a result of hyper growth plans and rushed hiring, most retail ventures are struggling to keep their flock together even before they roll out nationally.The past week has seen several high-profile exits in the retail sector, including the likes of Ved Prakash Arya who quit as Pantaloon COO to consider a private equity fund and AVB Retail HR head Vijay Kashyap who is said to be relocating to Australia. According to sources, Mr Kashyap is still in the process of hiring expats to fill key positions in the AV Birla retail venture. In another development, retail behemoth Wal-Mart’s Indian entry saw a churn even before it could come to fruition. Two of its top executives — cash-and-carry operations head Randy Guttery and another key executive Lance Retig — have moved out. Earlier, Subhiksha senior vice-president Abhijit Sanyal left to join Reliance Retail, as did V Nagaprasad, who was heading Subhiksha’s Karnataka operations. A few months back, Rajeev Karwal quit Reliance Retail within less than a year of joining the venture. Similarly, Lifestyle International CEO, G Shankar quit the company late last year.
In fact, the market has been abuzz with news of a few key executives on the verge of putting in their papers in two big retail ventures, although there has not been any formal announcements. Analysts say much of the rush to retail that happened last year is now taking its toll. “Being a hot sector offering tempting salaries, retail carried a high glamour quotient and many professionals got carried away,” says EMA Partners International managing director K Sudarshan.
“BUTnow with reality hitting hard in this highly demanding operations job, they are having second thoughts.” Industry watchers expect more exits at senior levels. HR experts say while retail is operation-oriented, a lot of the honchos are not used to the daily rigours of operations, considering they have moved upwards to blue sky strategising. Most of the talent was poached from FMCGs or brought in from abroad; so while other sectors are skewed 60:40 in favour of strategy, retail is 70:30 tilted towards operations. “There is a dearth of middle management talent in retail, which means top people can’t delegate much. In addition, there is ambiguity and lack of process orientation,” says Vidya Prakash, principal consultant, Stanton Chase.
For retail companies, it was a trial-and-error situation last year. There was no way they could have waited to get the right fit. “Start-ups and scale-ups have challenges that established players may not be ready for,” says Gauri Padmanabhan, partner, retail, Heidrick & Struggles. As a result, many are facing the churn now.
courtesy:economictimes
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