BOND – the order of the day

In today’s world loyalty has become a rare commodity and when it comes to employment it has become a thing of the past. Some 15 years back people had very little opportunities to change companies and as a result of it they were forced to be loyal to their employers and this was a era when employment contracts were un heard of since companies knew that the employee has got no other go and also the employee knew that there is not enough opportunity to go to some other company.
With the advent of globalisation the scene completely changed, giving some power to the employee. Most of the people have got 2 to 3 offers to choose from and even after choosing one and joining a company they are on the lookout for the other job which will pay them more, that more can be even 2000 pm extra. When this has become the case, companies in an effort to prevent the uncontrolled flow of employees to other companies have come up with employment bonds. Through the bonds what an organisation asks an employee is
“Please be loyal to us for a certain limited period so whatever training that we gave to you is justified”
In most of the cases the bond period is 1 or 2 years, but in very rare cases as sir has mentioned it is 5 years. Also most of the companies do not stress up on the bond if you are going for higher studies and you are breaking the bond when you have already served about 80% of your bond period.
From this we can see that the purpose of the bond is not to
• Instil a sense of loyalty in the employee (there are certain things which money can’t buy)
• As a means of gaining control over the employee by the employer (many people break the bond and pay the money when they are sure that the financial obligations are outweighed by something bigger)
Whereas the purpose of the bond is to
• The companies can make sure that employees serve at least the minimum period of time so the employer can get a positive return on the amount of money they spent on training the employee.
• The bonds will make the employees to think before they make a switch, but bond per se won’t prevent attrition but it will just reduce the loss the companies make because of the attrition
We can say that bond is inevitable in a knowledge economy.