The methodology of the DQ-IDC Best Employers Survey 2005

Research Design
The survey was designed and carried out in two phases. In the first phase, HR questionnaires were sent to around 200 IT companies. These spanned systems to software companies, and domestic and exports players. The questionnaire sought information on areas such as employee strength, salary structure, training days, tenure of top management, etc. Of the 200 companies, 46 companies participated in the first phase. Out of these, 32 companies were then short-listed for the second round, that is, the employee survey, based on the following parameters:

• Total employee size: Technical and marketing IT professionals in India only, as on April 1, 2005. This did not include either back-end employees or employees posted outside India
• Revenue CAGR (compound annual growth rate from fiscal 2002-03 to fiscal 2004-05)
• Average tenure of senior management (GM level and above): The tenure figure was factored by the age of the company to remove any discrepancies that may have arisen between old and relatively-new companies
• Total average training: Included the entire gamut from induction and technical to soft skills and others. The data was weighted on the total marketing and technical IT professionals in the company
• Retention rate: Share of employees (at least one-year-old in the company) who were still with the company on March 31, 2005
• Average salary hike (in percentage)

The first shortlist of companies was based on these six parameters, which were given different weights based on their relative importance. In the second phase, a large-scale survey was conducted by IDC India among 2,859 employees of the 32 shortlisted companies, across the country. The sampling was done on the basis of the distribution of employees in different cities. The employee survey comprised a self-administered questionnaire as the instrument with employees at different levels. This questionnaire included 55 statements under different broad parameters-Composite Satisfaction, Company Culture, Job Content/Growth, Training, Salary & Compensation, Appraisal Systems and People. Employees were asked to rate each of the statements on a 10-point agreement scale The respondents filled-in their opinions on the questionnaire in the presence of IDC's trained Interviewers and Supervisors.

Other than the above parameters, employees were also asked about their salary structure, preferred company in the industry, etc. The Employee Satisfaction survey covered seven major cities-Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad,Pune and Bangalore. In each city, the sample quota was assigned based on the company's employee strength in that city. A further classification of target respondents was done on the basis of job profile (marketing, technical and senior management) and years of IT experience (less than 2 years, 2-5 years, 5-10 years and more than 10 years). This quota system was followed strictly to get a proper representation of different types of employees in the sample. In order to retain objectivity, every attempt was made to take on an unbiased sample and to ensure that the management of the company did not influence the selection of respondents (employees) or their responses.

BES Ratings
Scores from the HR survey and the Employee Satisfaction survey, calculated separately, were combined to arrive at a composite score. Companies were then given ratings-five star, four star, three star, two star, and one star-based on the composite scores.

The HR score of the selected 32 companies was calculated based on the six parameters, indexed and weighted on a total score of 100. The six parameters used were-Total Employee Size; Revenue CAGR (2002-03 to 2004-05); Average Tenure (years); Total Average Training; Retention Rate; and Average Salary Hike (%).

The Employee survey score was calculated based on 10 parameters, which was also weighted and indexed on a total score of 100. The ten parameters used in this case- Overall Satisfaction score; Composite Satisfaction (Company Image); Company Culture; Job Content/Growth; Training; Salary and Compensation; Appraisal System; People; Preferred Company (Internal: Percentage of respondents of a company who said their own company was the preferred one); & Dream Company (Industry: Percentage of respondents in the total sample who preferred a particular company).

The scores on the above parameters like Company Image, Company Culture, Job content/Growth, Training, Salary & Compensation, Appraisal System and People were calculated on the basis of number of statements under each of these parameters. A correlation analysis was run between overall satisfaction and statements across all these broad parameters. It gave us the dependency of the dependent variable (Overall Satisfaction) on each of these statements, which, in turn, provided the weights of each of the statements. The weighted average of the individual scores of statements gave us the scores at each of these broad parameters level, and these were used for the final ranking.

The HR and Employee Satisfaction score was weighted and indexed on a 100-point score to arrive at DQ-IDC BES score, 2005. Dataquest and IDC India decided the weights for all parameters in consultation with HR experts from the Industry, and these were used in the survey analysis. The weights were finalized before the survey, to ensure complete unbiased ranking.

The IDC India team was led by Parijat Chakraborty and assisted by Nikhil Pant.