It?s being heralded as some sort of revolution. The heads of human resources (HR) of three Indian IT companies have got together to form an ?informal club?. Gushes the business magazine that has been hyping the development: ?(This) will make for a much more salubrious recruiting environment.?

Take off those blinkers, ignore the motivated press leaks and look at what this club actually implies. Regardless of what the HR head honchos might say is the agenda at such club meetings, it is only too possible that they will end up as a blatant invasion of employee privacy.

Would you apply for a job at your competitor, if you knew the job application would be bounced around the table by your current and prospective HR head? Would you enhance your own strengths and capabilities (something that everyone does when applying for a job) if you knew that your employer-to-be had access to your personal records? Would you at all take the risk of applying for a new job at any of these club members?

The HR heads who have formed the club say that the body will help curtail job-hopping, a bane of the IT industry. But this problem is really addressed by improving working conditions, making any employee unwilling to leave. Setting up a Big Brother club ? however noble the avowed intentions ? works in the short term. In practice, these gentlemen and lady are creating a 1984 society some 20 years after George Orwell?s schedule.

The arrival of the Internet age has seen a huge amount of infringement of employee privacy. Privacy Foundation claims that 27 per cent of 100 million workers worldwide have their e-mail and Net use monitored. In the US, this is higher at some 34 per cent. (Figures for India are not available.)

The latest tracking device is the cellphone. Companies are using them to zero in on their employees? exact location and the amount of time they spend there. Service provider Nextel already has 1,600 corporate customers for its Mobile Locator. No more long lunches or an afternoon in bed. Welcome to the fish bowl.

Assure Consulting says the top IT companies claim that they do no surveillance, but it is a taboo area as far as giving details is concerned. But employees in these companies claim that surveillance is very much the order of the day.

The advocates of the Big Brother regime say that such 24-hour snooping has multiple benefits.

It helps improve employee productivity.

It stops the outflow of intellectual property.

It helps curtail sexual harassment and other illegal activities.

It?s not a small matter. According to some estimates, non-business-based Internet browsing costs US companies $35 million per 1,000 employees. The tab in lost productivity in the US adds up to $63 billion a year. The figures for India will not be that high.

So is the HR club a body to be lauded as a proactive measure intended to save costs? Well, it will save costs all right, but at the cost of creating a climate of suspicion and disenchantment. In just a few years, some of the major IT companies have moved from being among the Best Employers to those haunting the fringes of this elite group. They are headed further downhill.

Perhaps they will see reason. These columns had earlier pointed out the privacy issues and discrimination in the Nasscom plan to set up a ?blacklist? of job-hopping IT and IT-enabled services (IteS) employees. That led to Nasscom abandoning the idea.

The HR club could also face an early demise. Some people still see life beyond saving a few rupees. TCS, the big daddy of all IT companies and (after its listing and greater public exposure) the most respected, has not joined this club and will not.

THE HR HEADS’ CLUB

How it helps the company’s HR managers

They get to know the salaries offered by the other companies.

Can institute a no-poaching pact.

Can prevent job-hopping among these companies.

They can get to know the strengths and weaknesses of prospective employees.

How it hurts the company’s employees

They will not look for jobs in any other company in the coterie.

They will always fear that their own personal data will be available to HR managers even outside the companies involved.

They will fear that they will be victimised by their own company if they apply for a job.

Their work environment will change to one in which everyone is suspicious of the other.