Attrition rate in Goa's pharmaceutical companies has come down to 20 per cent from 40 per cent last year. Professional working environment, high level of corporate culture and access to qualified and fluent English speaking personnel have contributed to this welcome development.

Pharma companies in the state have realized that strategic deployment and management of personnel can contribute to the future growth initiatives, according to TeamLease Services, India's largest staffing solution company and the biggest player in the temping (temporary staffing) industry.

The reason for the fall in attrition rate is primarily because of introduction of structured organizational formats allowing growth of candidates together with employee retention methodologies and training programmes to mould people on the job. There has also been a good revision of pay scales and perks. Such efforts by the employer have resulted in the loyalty of the employees adhering to job contracts, Deep Mukherjee, vice president TeamLease Services told Pharmabiz.

Until a few years ago, the job opportunities in Goa were pharmaceuticals, tourism related services, hospitality and value-added agricultural industries. In the last eight months, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), human resources outfits, information technology and related service companies have entered the state. This has led to a trend where local graduates need not move to other cities in search of jobs because Goa is offering it all in pharmaceuticals, food processing information technology, aviation, travel-tourism, hospitality, engineering and medical centres stated Mukherjee.

In the next 18 months Goa will be a hub for IT and ITES jobs like Pune was envisaged as a traditional manufacturing hub for companies.

The state's Special Economic Zones are expected to offer 80 per cent jobs to locals. The success of tourism has led to increased investments in the hospitality space. The performance of the pharma sector in Goa, which has most of the export production sits of units, is seeing new entrants coming. Goa job market has potential to employ 3000 people in pharma and hospitality sector, which is TeamLease's focus. It will recruit 3000 people for hospitality sector within a year, informed Mukherjee.

TeamLease has over 65,000 employees on the rolls, present across 464 locations with 20 offices in the country. It is recognized as a pioneer in the concept of temporary staffing in India. It is currently India's second largest private sector employer after TCS and is poised to be the largest by end of 2007. The company hires one person every half an hour since the last three years (since 2001) including weekends. The company made an entry into Goa in early 2006 with much apprehension but is now convinced of the potential of quality people it can offer from the local population for the pharmaceutical and hospitality sector which are its focus areas.

For the Goa operations alone TeamLease has a dedicated 2,500 work force serving the state's human resources requirements. In the next six months it will be offering 500 jobs in the pharma sector in the areas of sales, documentation, back office process production and software, Out of the 50-60 companies in the drug sector, TeamLease is serving 15 big names. While locals are ideally suited for the middle management openings, the company is also looking at the option of sourcing from Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi, and Bangalore for the senior managerial posts.

"TeamLease is confident that staff retention would be possible going by the human resource management and business strategy of units there," informed Mukherjee.