My Tryst with Bonds

Bond…the dreaded word for any fresher joining an organization…It was no different for me too…

So much has already been discussed in this forum on various companies’ practices in imposing various kinds of bonds. So I will instead try to share my personal experience with an employment bond with u all.

Soon after I completed my engineering, I joined this huge organization in mid July in 2007 after signing an employment bond of Rupees 2 lakhs which could be enforced in case I left before completing 2 years of employment. So effectively I had to remain in the organization before mid July 2009. But I had to join XIMB in June ’09 which left me one month short of my bond completion. Since Dec’08 the company was on attrition spree due to the global recession in the end of 2008. Many low performing employees were asked to leave, that too in a recessionary period when everyone was trying to stick to their existing jobs like glue. I thought I couldn’t have asked for a better period to put down my papers. The HR had waived off the bonds of a couple of people who were on bench and wanted to leave for higher studies. I assumed they were only too happy to have employees help them in downsizing. But I was wrong, and majorly so.

It so turned out that this special bond-waiver offer was only for the low-performing employees. So when I approached the HR with my case, they kept asking me why I wanted to leave for further studies at this juncture when I was performing so well in the organization and how difficult it was to give me more than a 50 thousand cut in my bond amount. So I approached my business unit head who told me he would love to have me in the organization for longer and that I could consider leaving for higher studies the next year. But realizing that I just had to leave, he extended his full support to me and put a word with the HR to not charge me anything. Though this helped, it was not of much use, since on the books my performance rating was high and the HR said that according to company policies they couldn’t officially relieve me with a complete waiver. It was during this period that I wondered why at all I had performed well. I was disillusioned with the whole system.

But the HR tried helping me out of this unique problem and they suggested that I go on loss-of-pay leave and come back in July end and formally put down my papers then. It would then be easy for them to officially complete clearance formalities without me having to pay anything. I negotiated with them to postpone this whole procedure to September end when I would be back home for Pooja holidays and they agreed given the support I had from the higher management who was very appreciative of my work. In September, given my time constraints, the HR helped me in completing all formalities within a day and I had a very pleasant exit interview, something I realized that I wouldn’t have had if I had not performed well.

Thus, I finally bid adieu to my organization in Sept’09, much after I had joined XIMB. This was my bitter sweet tryst with bonds and I shared it with you guys just to highlight how complex the treatment and enforcement of bonds can be, given the various dynamics surrounding the macroeconomic environment (boom, recession etc.), industry attrition trends, performance-related ratings and the power of the higher management’s recommendation in the company’s HR policies.