Research Paper: Coaching Awareness and Needs Assessment in Indian IT Services Industry

Research Paper By Pramod Nigam
(Executive Coach, INDIA)

Introduction:

The Indian IT services industry is expected to reach $100 billion in revenues in the financial year 2012, with exports contributing to about $69 billion. The industry impacts India’s GDP by around 7.5% and employs close to 2.8 million employees.  The sector has increased its contribution to India’s GDP from 1.2% in FY1998 to 7.5% in FY2012. IT service offerings have evolved from application development and maintenance, to emerge as full service players providing testing services, infrastructure services, consulting and system integration.

However, the sector continues to face challenges of competitiveness in the globalized world, particularly from countries like China and Philippines.  It’s a relatively young industry in India and has seen tremendous growth in the last 12 yrs or so. It’s a service industry and hence people are the most important part of the success of this industry – they need to be motivated, effective, self confident and well groomed to take over leadership roles in a fast growing industry.

Not many studies have been done to identify the gaps in the overall professional and personal status of the employees and their needs for development.  An attempt has been made in this study to identify the areas that would lead to improved personal and professional effectiveness of the staff of IT Services Industry.  In addition, the study also identifies the awareness about coaching as a tool and its applicability in this sector.

Key Findings:

• Highest gaps were identified “Health & Fitness, Career Satisfaction, Leadership Skills & Networking Skills
• Only 31% of the respondents have heard about “Executive Coaching;  Less than 3% have had experience of coaching
• “Are you open to idea of undergoing Executive Coaching? - 96% say “Yes” or “May be”

Methodology:

A questionnaire was designed and tested with a small set of staff to find out the relevance of the questions asked. After suitable modification, an online survey was created and sent out to a cross section of IT services company staff. Care was taken to ensure that respondents represent different gender, size of companies, age, work experience, organization level, etc.

Questions were divided into 4 sections:

Part I – Demographics – gender, age, experience

Part II – Your Current Status vs. Aspirations

Part III – About Coaching – awareness, experience

Parts IV – Next Steps – follow up interviews with some respondents

Key investigations were in Part II and Part III. In Part II, respondents were asked to rate their current status and aspiration level (In the scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being the highest) in each of the 15 identified attributes that are likely to affect the professional and personal effectiveness of the staff. In Part III, questions were asked to understand the awareness about coaching among the respondents. Further, telephonic interviews were conducted with some of the willing respondents to get more insights into the ratings and the underlying reasons for the same.

The survey was conducted over a period of 3 weeks between September/October 2012. The data thus collected was analysis and results were summarized – an overall summary of the results is attached for reference.