ReleaseWire

Outsourcing Leader Luxoft Hits 94% Employee Retention Rate, Wins “Best Employer of Russia” Award

Luxoft Beats Global Employee Retention Standards in India and China, Fostering Strong Client Retention

Posted: Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 11:59 AM CST

Moscow, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 01/11/2007 --Luxoft, one of Russia’s leading providers of IT outsourcing services to companies like IBM, Dell, Deutsche Bank, T-Mobile and others, today announced that it achieved a 94 percent employee retention rate in 2006.

With more than 1,900 employees in Russia and across its global locations, the company also announced it received a “Best Employer of Russia” award as part of the prestigious “Leaders in the Russian Economy” list. This award is sponsored by the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Coordination Council of the Russian Employers' Associations, the International Business Support Foundation, and the Rating Analytical Agency.

Since its founding in 2000, Luxoft’s employee retention rate has exceeded industry standards. The six percent employee attrition rate experienced by Luxoft last year, down one percent from the prior year, strongly outperforms other outsourcing industry statistics. India’s IT-services sector attrition rate has run as high as 30 percent at the junior programmer level according to the “NASSCOM-Hewitt total Rewards Study 2005”, and the Hewitt “Attrition and Retention Asia Pacific Study 2006” reported China’s outsourcing industry attrition at 23 percent.

Luxoft attributes its strong track record to several factors integral to the company’s culture and business practices including:

• Rigorous and highly selective recruiting practices that bring some of the most highly experienced and educated talent in the Eastern European, Europe and North America. 74 percent of Luxoft employees earned Masters degrees, and more than 68 percent have seven or more years of industry experience.

• A formal and ever-expanding training and education program with courses focusing on developing or expanding skills in technical and industry expertise; relationship building and client service; and multi-language fluency. Employees typically spend 12 days a year in Luxoft training, and are also encouraged and supported to pursue and gain the highest industry certifications in quality, security and programming.

• Company sponsored and dedicated university programmes across Russia and the Ukraine to encourage and cultivate new talent for Luxoft and the Russian IT industry. Luxoft is also a regular sponsor of the annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

National Award Recognises Employment Leadership

As further testimony to the company’s commitment to IT employment excellence, Luxoft was the only IT company to be recognised with the “Best Employer of Russia” distinction in 2006, out of a total of 40 winning companies.

The “Best Employers of Russia” award category is aimed at recognising Russian companies and organisations who have achieved significant success in areas like workforce growth, preservation and expansion; job creation; employment
of young people; and ensuring and protecting employees' rights.
In addition to this latest award, Luxoft’s commitment to management excellence has been well recognised by the global business community including being featured in the Top 50 Best Managed Global Outsourcing Black Book (2006.)

Employee Retention & Excellence Is Good Business

The end result of Luxoft’s focus on providing a rich professional experience that retains and grows employees is stability – internally and for clients where Luxoft has traditionally seen a 90 percent client retention rate. Luxoft enjoys successful and long-term client relationships with many leading companies including Boeing, Dell, IBM, Thomson, Deutsche Bank, Caterpillar, Areva, Thomson, Citibank, U.S. Department of Energy, T-Mobile, Ping Identity and others.

“We put a lot of emphasis on providing a workplace that makes our employees want to stay and grow with us,” said Dmitry Loschinin, President and CEO, Luxoft. “One of the most exciting outcomes is the ability to offer our clients a consistent team that knows their business and work culture, deeply understands their industry and their systems and truly cares about the success of an engagement as much as they do. We have found that focusing on employee retention enables us to maintain a high level of customer retention as well.”

One of Luxoft’s leading and long-term clients Deutsche Bank commented on the experience level and value of Luxoft’s people, especially in complex outsourcing engagements. “We were impressed with the quality of Luxoft’s people,” said Daniel Marovitz, CEO for technology at Deutsche Bank's global banking unit. “More than 70 per cent of Luxoft employees are senior specialists with over 7 years of IT related experience. Over 80 per cent are educated to PHD or Master’s level and they’ve been working with large clients like Boeing and Dell. At Luxoft we’ve found teams of experts ready to challenge you with tough questions. And that’s what you need on complex projects.”

About Luxoft
Luxoft, founded in 2000, is a global software developer and IT services exporter with operations in the US, Canada, UK, Ukraine and Russia. Luxoft has the world’s largest delivery capabilities in Russia and CIS.

Luxoft provides a full range of custom software development services and enjoys long-term relationships with clients including some of the best-known global business leaders, such as Boeing, Deutsche Bank, IBM and Dell. Luxoft also works closely with many mid-size growth companies and independent software vendors (ISVs).

Luxoft’s software development processes meet the highest quality standards, and the company was the first in Europe to achieve Level 5 CMMI quality certification. Luxoft runs research and offshore development centres in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Dubna, Omsk plus centres in Kiev and Odessa, Ukraine.

Luxoft won the National Outsourcing Association’s “Financial Outsourcing Project of the Year 2006” for its work with Deutsche Bank and the company has recently been recognised by BusinessWeek as the top emerging outsourcing provider in Russia and Eastern Europe. Luxoft was also ranked as the top IT services company on the Rising Star list in the IAOP’s Global Outsourcing 100 and was featured in Global Services Magazine’s Global Services 100 which recognises the world’s most innovative business and technology service providers.

For more information visit www.luxoft.com

Press Contacts:
Lucy King/Cheryl Wanless/Rafi Cooper
Buffalo Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7 292 8680
Email: Luxoft@buffalo.co.uk