The economy has transitioned to financial system in which gross domestic product is progressively more dominated by services. Services permeate each aspect of our lives. We use restaurant services; transportation services; hotels; electricity and telephones; postal, services of hairdressers; courier and maintenance services; services of public dealings and marketing firms;; dentists physicians; lawyers; stockbrokers and insurance agents; film theatres; and swimming pools .When we do buy goods, such as new car or a washing machine, we often still rely on services to keep them running and repair them when they break down. Services permit us to budget our time as well as our wealth.

“The twentieth century was the age of machine; the twenty-first century will be the age of people”.

Buzzwords like globalization, traverse functional teams, downsizing, empowerment, learning organizations and knowledge workforce are changing the way of life of managers and the approach they handle people.

2. STRATEGIES and POLICIES OF SOFTWARE INDUSTRIES:

2.1. Motivation and Retention of Employees:

Retention and motivation of employees are key HR concerns today. People a Gartner group company specializing in management of individual capital in software organizations has analyzed that the common tenure for a Software expert is less than three years. Further, the employ of new technologies, the support of learning and teaching, and a tough atmosphere ranked higher than competitive pay structures as efficient retention practices. Our own recent survey of 280 software professionals from 4 Indian software companies, showed that while the professional gave importance to personal and cultural job-fit, HR managers believed that the key to retention was salary and career satisfaction. Money was a principal motivator for 'starters', but for those into their third or fourth jobs, their value-addition to the organization was more significant. Financially, offering 'the best salaries in industry' is the minimum every company is doing, apart from performance-based bonuses, long-service awards, and stock options. Several organizations regularly carry out employee satisfaction and organization atmosphere surveys, and are setting up Manpower Allocation Cells (MAC) to allocate 'the correct project to the correct person'. In fact, some are even helping workforce with their personal and family responsibilities to satisfy and motivate their workforce.

2.2. Best Talent Attraction:

In a rigid job market, many organizations frequently practice sheer and simultaneous demands for the similar kinds of professionals. In their search for manpower, they are cajoling talent around the world. In such a seller's market, software companies are determined to understand which organizational job, and reward factors contribute to attracting the most excellent talent one having the right blend of technical and person-bound skills. This would indicate an understanding of 'the tools of the trade' united with conceptualization and communication skills, ability for systematic and logical thoughts, leadership and team building, originality and innovation. The software industries of India suffer from a scarcity of knowledgeable manpower such as systems analysts and project managers and attracting them is a key HR challenge.

2.3. Compensation and Reward:

Increasing demands of technology coupled with a short supply of professionals has increased the costs of delivering the technology. This makes incentive compensation a important characteristic, with the outcome that software companies have moved from conventional pay-for-time methods to a combination of pay-for-knowledge and pay-for-performance plans. With the determinants of pay being profit, performance and value-addition, emphasis is now on profit sharing or performance-based pay, keeping in view the long-term organizational objectives rather than short-term production-based bonuses. Skills, competencies, and commitment supercede loyalty, hard work and length of service. This pressurizes HR teams to devise optimized compensation packages, although compensation is not the motivator in this industry.

2.4. Increasing Loyalty and Commitment:

As with any other expert, what really matters to software professionals is selecting 'the best place to work with', which is what each company is firm to be. The worldwide nature of this industry and the 'project-environment' has added new enriching dimensions to these firms. In a value-driven society, values are determined and shared throughout the organization. Typically, areas in which values are articulated are: performance, competence, competitiveness, innovation, teamwork, quality, customer service, and care and consideration for people. Flat structure, open and informal culture, authority based on expertise and capability rather than position, and flexi-timings are some of the norms software firms follow. The idea is to make the work place a 'fun place' with the hope of increasing faithfulness and commitment.

2.5. The Demand Supply Gap:

Shortage of software professionals is global in nature and not peculiar to the Indian software industry alone. W. Strigel, founder of Software Productivity Centre Inc. (1999) has projected the shortage of software professionals to be one million by 2006. In fact, a survey reports that 75 per cent of US companies planned to reengineer their applications using newer technologies, but found that 72 per cent of their existing staff lacked the skills needed in these technologies, and 14 per cent were not even re-trainable. For India, it is predicted that in the year 2004 itself, the IT sector needs 1,95,000 professionals. This trend will continue, and more IT professionals will be required. Consequently, recruitment managers are exploring new sources of IT manpower from non-IT professional sectors, as well fresh, trainable science graduates.

2.6. Integrating HR strategy with Business Strategy:

The strategic HR role focuses on aligning HR practices with business strategy. The HR professional is expected to be a strategic partner contributing to the success of business plans, which to a great extent depend on HR policies pertaining to recruitment, retention, motivation, and reward. The other major areas of concern for HR personnel in this context are, management of change, matching resources to future business requirements, organizational effectiveness, and employee development.

2.7. Encouraging Quality and Customer Focus:

Today’s corporate culture needs to actively support quality and customer orientation. With globalization and rapid technological change, quality is of utmost importance for the Indian companies, which earn most of their revenues through exports. Hence, the HR professional as a strategic partner needs to encourage a culture of superior quality to ensure customer satisfaction, the only real measure of quality of a product or service.

To be competitive today, an organization needs to be customer responsive. Responsiveness includes innovation, quick decision-making, leading an industry in price or value, and effectively linking with suppliers and vendors to build a value chain for customers. Employee attitudes correlate highly with customer attitude. The shift to a customer focus redirects attention from the firm to the value chain in which it is embedded. HR practices within a firm should consequently be extended to suppliers and customers outside the firm.

2.8. Value Addition training for up-gradation of Skills:

Rapid and unpredictable technological changes and the increased emphasis on quality of services are compelling software businesses to recruit adaptable and competent employees. Software professionals themselves expect their employers provide them with all the training they may need in order to perform not only in their current projects, but also in related ones that they may subsequently hold within the organization. As observed by Watts Humphrey, Fellow of the Carnegie Mellon University, "as software professionals gain competence, they do not necessarily gain motivation. This is because a creative engineer or scientist who has learned how to accomplish something has little interest in doing it again. Once they have satisfied their curiosity, they may abruptly lose interest and seek an immediate change". And when the rate of technological change is high may be higher than the time required to acquire competence in one area professionals could undergo psychological turbulence owing to the need to work in a new technology throughout their career. They want to gain new knowledge, which will be utilized by their organization. On the basis of the new learning they want to work in higher segments of software value chain. Therefore, constant up-gradation of employee skills poses yet another challenge for HR personnel.

3. CHALLENGES FOR SOFTWARE INDUSTRY:

The main challenges to the IT Industry are

i. Recruitment planning

ii. Performance management

iii. Training and development

iv. Compensation management

v. HRM as whole

3.1. Recruitment Planning:

Recruitment planning is most important component in new people management with special reference to IT industry. We have to deal with human assets so it becomes important and have good quality of people in the organization. We have to take the recruitment planning in very serious manner to ensure that we can get best talent in the organization.

3.2. Performance Management:

Now the challenge is to handle the performance of your workers. You have to get right individual in a organization to handle your business. The challenge should be to create a performance culture where you can provide opportunities for enhance performance, where optimum performance becomes a way life.

3.3. Training and Development:

Training and development is another challenging area in software industry. We have to chalk out a appropriate approach for training and development so that workers are well prepared to handle the challenges in advance.

3.4. Compensation Management:

The IT industry is one of the high paying industries. This is very competitive industry, we have to attract best talent, offer best promising payment package to the employees. Now IT companies are having ESOP with the compensation package. But the really challenge should be how we are able to incorporate all the subsystems in HR. Ultimately this would help the organization for achieving exceptional performance. People have to be groomed to get in with the performance culture. We have to create an environment that stimulates the creation of knowledge; its sustenance will be the challenge for IT companies in the future. HR department cannot function with traditional systems. Now the role will shift to HR facilitator, to facilitate change process. HR facilitator will have to involve the whole organization in this process and act as a guide, coach, counselor and facilitator. Any organization in the IT industry will have to face these challenges like Infosys, Satyam, Micro soft India, Intel India. These IT companies are leaders in their own stride. They have excellent recruitment policies, huge data bank, and placement agencies. They are also having rigorous tests to guarantee that they can get high profile talent that will fit in their culture. They have best performance system that evaluates the organization as whole. They have been able to tackle the quantum of performance with fairly efficient manner. The major tasks for these software companies are to build corporate civilization. They are diverting all the efforts to build performance driven culture. The major issue for these companies is to get right man for right job. We have to find person with the required skills, experiences, mindsets, and also he must be suitable for these organizations.

3.5. Attrition and Retention:

IT companies are having high degree of attrition. The challenges for these companies are to continue this attrition pace as small as achievable. Different companies admit dissimilar techniques to retain their workers like ESOP, high pay packets, other benefits. So we have to maintain this attrition pace as low as possible to retain super achievers.

4. CONCLUSION:

With the advent of a work situation where more and more companies have to admit that their valued employees are leaving them, a new concept of career and human resource management is bound to emerge. The center of attention of this latest pattern should not only be to attract, encourage and preserve key 'knowledge workers', but also on how to reinvent careers when the faithfulness of the workers is to their 'brain ware' rather than to the organization.

With lifetime service in one company not on the plan of most employees, jobs will become short period. Today's high-tech workers aspiration a nonstop up-gradation of skills and want work to be exciting and enjoying a trend that requires designing work systems that fulfill such expectations. As employees achieve superior proficiency and control over their careers, they would reinvest their gain back into their work.

HR practitioners must also play a proactive responsibility in software industry. As business associates, they require to be conscious of business strategies, and the opportunities and threats facing the organization. As strategists, HR professionals require to get incorporation and in shape to an organization's business approach. As interventionists, they need to adopt an all-embracing approach to understanding organizational issues, and their effect on people. Finally, as innovators, they should initiate latest processes and procedures, which they consider will increase organizational efficiency.

5. REFERENCES:

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9. Walker, J.W. and Stopper, W.G. (2000) “Developing Human Resource Leaders” Human Resource Planning, Vol.23, No.1, p.38-44.

10. Webb, J. (2004) “Putting Management Back into Performance: A Handbook for Managers and Supervisors”, Allen and Unwin, Australia.

11. Joynt, P. and Morton, B. (2005) “The Global HR Manager: Creating the Seamless Organization”, Jaico Publishing House, Mumbai.

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14. Kandula, S.R. (2004), “Human Resource Management in Practice: With 300 Models, Techniques and Tools”, Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi.

Received on 20.06.2017 Modified on 03.08.2017

Asian J. Management; 2017; 8(4):1233-1236.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2017.00187.1