Binding or Bonding ??

I believe that this whole concept of bond is a beautiful example of “balance of power” as what we have discussed in our first dialectic forum of non-negotiable offer. Now I agree that the different industries like IT, manufacturing, aviation, fashion etc all have their own rules but everything at the end revolves around the appropriate talent acquisition and retention as already pointed out by most of my friends. Ultimately at the end of the day it is the people who form the organization.

There is nothing wrong in talented people searching for new opportunities and simultaneously companies using measures like bond contracts to retain the employees. This is where the” balance of power” lies and how the two parties outweigh each other decides whose side is heavier.

In this ever evolving new economy, it is the knowledge and the ideas that are most valued. So the employees are at an above edge and the coming era has to be of free agents. The free agents work for their excitement and self expression and not for the particular company. The companies actually cannot claim for the intellectual property of the employees which is an integrated outcome of education, experience and external environment. And then binding them with financial liability is not at all justified, those who want to leave will leave. These bonds are a trivial deterrent to stop them and if companies are recovering their recruitment and training cost then I agree with santosh how they actually calculate the cost or it’s simply the wish of HR manager.

The objective of bonds seems to be too small when we visualize the entire scenario from the top. The need of the hour is that companies will have to be that competent that they are not helpless when the employees leave. They will have to develop a methodology wherein the control is not with a single entity but is shared so that when it comes to bargain than the company also can tilt the pan in its favour at least not using the defensive measures like bond.