DRDO's new HR policies to attract and retain best talent

New Delhi: The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is mulling the initiation of a number of new personnel policies, including performance-based incentives or royalty sharing in an attempt to attract, and retain, talent across the large number of laboratories that make up the organisation. New HR initiatives are being looked at even as the organization battles high attrition levels, especially at the middle rung.

According to Dr KV Raghavan, chairman of DRDO's Delhi-based Recruitment and Assessment Centre (RAC), attracting talent is not the problem for the organisation, but retaining them certainly is.

Talking to reporters, Dr Raghavan has also said that DRDO is looking at the possibility of fast track promotions and sabbaticals. The DRDO has placed new HR policies with an emphasis on aptitude assessment, challenging jobs and performance-based incentives like royalty sharing from the private industry before the government.

According to Dr Raghavan, the organisation is facing a problem of retaining talent as many candidates see a stint with DRDO as a boost to a career in the private industry.

Currently, DRDO draws about 55 per cent of its intake from state universities and about 30 per cent from Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and National Institutes of Technology, mainly through entrance tests, which are conducted by the IITs in over 100 centres every September.

The DRDO also recruits between 25 and 40 NRI scientists every year.

As of now DRDO has a total strength of 7,000 scientists supported by 12,000 technical staff and around 12,000 administrative staff.

Set up in 1985, RAC's primary function is to recruit scientists and also to assess their performance for promotions. RAC has undertaken various programmes to induct about 1,000 scientists each year and also assesses the suitability of more than 1,400 scientists for promotion to the next higher grade.