Bond or no bond - It all boils down to a company's work culture

Let me begin by narrating a statement made by the Senior Vice-President of Cognizant to a group of fresh recruits (which included me) during our induction program a couple of years ago. In clear cut terms he said, "All we expect from you is continuous support in order to solve our client problems. Cognizant is your company and we do everything possible to ensure that you work for Cognizant under your own will and desire. Till the day you feel you are genuinely committed to the company treat it like your home but the very moment you have doubts about your commitment and want to move on, please feel free to do so." At that point, this sort of a statement sounded very blunt to me and made me wonder as to how could an employer so directly establish the lack of dependency on its employees. However, I felt the true essence of this statement an year down the line when I could see my friends at other IT companies wanting to part ways with their respective companies and being unable to do so because they were made to sign employment bonds. On the other hand, here I was, with no restrictions on me whatsoever and yet completely satisfied with the one year stint at Cognizant.

In today's age when terms like "Employee Empowerment" are gaining rapid momentum, trust between the employer and the employee is of extreme importance. A clear cut way of establishing this trust is by 'not imposing' an employment bond. Of course there are many who still feel that businesses should be bereft of the intangibles and hence an employer has every right to make full use of its resources even if that means putting employment restrictions. The true reasons behind imposing an employment bond are stated to be on the terms of attrition reduction and preventing misuse of training costs but then what could explain the fact that Cognizant has one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry. Even Cognizant incurs huge training costs on each of its recruits and stands a huge risk of employees moving on once they have acquired the necessary skills but then its the 'trust factor' that plays such a crucial role in preventing this. What more its a clear cut message to the employees stating, "We trust ourselves enough to ensure that you would want to be a part of the company at your own will." Such a small gesture goes a long way in an employee building enough confidence in his company.

Given the fact that majority of the businesses these days operate in the knowledge industry wherein employees are a company's biggest asset, its obvious that your most important assets should be given enough freedom to operate at will. At the end of the day it all boils down to a company's work culture. If the work culture is conducive to the employees' well being, you don't need a signed piece of paper to ensure business continuity. At the same time if the work culture of a company itself reflects mistrust, even uncountable number of bonds would not be able to ensure high productivity.