Cognizant puts up $30 million for employee retention

Bengaluru/Chennai: In an unusual move and in a bid to tackle its high attrition rate, Cognizant has set up a $30-million corpus, dubbed as a retention fund, to hold back top performers and digitally-skilled employees. The corpus is used when such employees receive offers from competitors. Cognizant, sources said, matches the competitor’s offer.

The company’s annualised attrition rate in the December quarter was 19%, one of the highest among the large IT companies. While overall attrition moved up just 1% compared to the previous quarter, there was a big spike in voluntary attrition — employees leaving for other opportunities. This rose to 16%, from 10%.