GoKart:

GoKart is an e-commerce company based in Hyderabad, India. Founded in 2008 by two IIM
alumni - Shivam Bansal and Ashok Ramani, the company initially focused on selling books
and later expanded into other markets such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle
products. Over the years, the company acquired new heights and currently is the second
largest e-commerce firm in terms of market share. GoKart is presently valued at $22 billion,
with over 30,000 employees employed in various roles. The corporate headquarters has a
total of 600 employees and are managed by the company’s human resources department.
Mr. Ramesh Khanna, a fresh MBA graduate from IIM Lucknow, has been hired by the
company to manage their corporate workforce as an HR manager. Mr. Khanna reports to Mr.
Prakash Sharma, who is the HR director of the company since its inception in 2008. One day
Mr. Sharma called the newly recruited Mr. Khanna and expressed his concerns over the
increasing attrition rates at the company headquarters. The HR director was mainly
concerned with the attrition rates being significantly higher than the industry average. In
addition to this, he was asked to present his plan to reduce attrition in the review meeting
with the CEO, which is to be held after two days of this meeting.
Mr. Khanna was aware that although a healthy level of churn is desirable in the organization,
employee attrition can be a severe problem if not managed properly. Leaving employees
often take significant value with them in the form of professional knowledge, specific
business practices, relations with clients, and so on. Also, attrition can also be a financial
burden on the company in terms of lost training and development costs.
The previous HR manager had captured data through year-end employee satisfaction surveys,
which were conducted after the appraisal which was available with Mr. Khanna. The data
(parameters) for an employee who is currently employed and didn’t attrite has been captured
from recent employee satisfaction survey. The data for the employees that have got attrite has
been captured by the last survey that has been filled by the attrite employee while the attrition
details have been captured from the HR employee’s database.
Mr. Khanna wanted his turn-around plan to be based on sophisticated data analysis to
enhance his credibility. However, before making his turn-around strategy, he wanted to
understand the underlying factors responsible for such high attrition. And, since the review
meeting was scheduled at a short notice, Mr. Khanna decided to visualize the existing data in
place of conducting an exploratory study followed by conclusive research. His initial
thoughts revolved around already captured factors such as gender, job satisfaction ratings,
performance ratings obtained from the supervisors, previous salary hikes, age, their years of
employment at GoKart, and so on. As the deadline was approaching for the review meeting,
Mr. Khanna was tensed as his career as an HR manager at GoKart was significantly
dependent on his presentation at the review meeting.