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Half of ITC's 7,000-odd managers have been with the tobacco, hotels and consumer products enterprise for more than a quarter of century. Attrition at senior management levels - from chief executive officer to business heads - has been zero for at least 15 years now.

The last time ITC hired to fill up the top deck was 23 years ago when it roped in S Sivakumar from a farmers' co-operative to conceptualise the path-breaking e-Choupal model. And perhaps fittingly, Anand Nayak, chief of human resources, has been with the Kolkata-headquartered consumer goods giant for almost four decades.

Meet the lifers at perhaps the only corporation amongst the top tier of India Inc that has so many managers who dedicate their entire professional life to a single company. Hindustan Unilever (HUL) is the only other sizeable Indian operation that comes close to matching ITC's ability to keep the brass together in such huge numbers for as long a time. Half of HUL's 1,500 managers are lifers.

At senior management levels, it goes up to 60% although if you combine mid- and senior-level managers, it comes down to a third. HUL's overall attrition rate is 5% and of late it has lost senior managers to rivals. The Unilever subsidiary has also displayed a new-found willingness to hire for top positions - for instance, former PepsiCo ED Geetu Verma recently came on board as head of foods.

In financial services, organisations such as ICICI Bank, HDFC and Kotak Mahindra have had closely-knit teams over decades. Yet, these companies can't hold a candle to ITC for two reasons. One, while ICICI has not felt the need to headhunt for core positions, it has lost people in the top deck after they didn't win the race to succeed former chief executive officer KV Kamath.

And, two, while the core team at companies such as Kotak Mahindra has remained more or less intact, the difference at ITC is that it does not have lifers only in the top management but at the second- and third-rung levels, too.

Chairman YC Deveshwar joined as a management pupil (or trainee) way back in 1968, and even though he worked as the chairman and managing director of Air India during 1991-94, it was on lien.

Among the three executive directors on the board, Nakul Anand (hospitality, travel and tourism) and PV Dhobale (paperboards, speciality papers and packaging) are lifers; Kurush Grant (cigarettes and FMCG) joined after spending less than a year as a management trainee at DCM. The EDs have been identified as potential successors to Deveshwar.

At the divisional chief executive and functional head level in ITC, the heads of tobacco, foods, lifestyle retail, personal care, paperboards and speciality papers, education and stationery products, hotels and R&D are all lifers.

Clearly, ITC believes there are business benefits with such a structure. HR chief Nayak says the lifer workforce has become its DNA.

One major reason for such low attrition is a compensation structure that rewards retention handsomely, although Nayak does point out that "we don't pay what Unilever or P&G does".

"The remuneration and reward strategy is uniquely designed to attract and retain talent. Remuneration is competitive and contemporary, with unique elements that encourage long-term careers," adds the HR head.

Any manager who completes six years in ITC becomes eligible for employee stock options. At last count, over 900 managers had subscribed to the scheme.

Nayak, however, stresses that it is the intangible benefits at ITC that outweigh remuneration - the spirit of entrepreneurship, opportunity to build brands, and to start new businesses from scratch.

The unique advantage of ITC is that it is driven by professionals and not by a promoter (as of December 2011, British-American Tobacco owned just under 31% stake in the company with financial institutions holding 32.67%). This allows for a structure that gives full freedom to business heads to lead a segment almost as if they own it.

Many of these lifers have played an important role in powering the new engines of growth that has made ITC a diversified enterprise spanningsoaps to hotels. "Given the pace at which we are growing, it is always better to nurture lifers since we can blindly trust them with investments," Nayak says.

As Hemant Malik, ITC's chief operating officer (trade marketing and distribution - FMCG), a lifer himself, says: "ITC instills a sense of ownership and encourages you to perform with independence and freedom. People move on and change jobs in the quest for new experiences; we get that here."

E Balaji, CEO at HR firm Ma Foi Randstad, says the battle to grow lifers in HUL and ITC is something to watch out for. "Ultimately, the number of lifers will depend on hiring plans, continued growth and expansion plans. And both the companies are equally aggressive in these areas," says Balaji.

Meantime, HUL is unfazed by recent losses of fast-trackers to rivals such as Reckitt Benckiser. It still regards itself as the leadership factory for India Inc. "Few people who leave HUL go on for senior jobs in other companies. Amongst our alumni network, there are plenty of executives who have become CEOs," says Leena Nair, executive director heading HR at HUL. Latest example: Sidharth Singh, a category head at HUL's foods portfolio, who will move to men's grooming company Super-Max as its India head.

Still, the process of grooming lifers has its pitfalls. The head of a Delhi-based executive search firm says ITC has a laidback culture where targets are not sacrosanct. "I know some of its executives who have found it difficult to adjust elsewhere even though salaries were good," says the headhunter.

"Lifers enjoy a huge comfort zone and often have immense clout within the company," adds James Agrawal, director and head (India) at BTI Consultants, the C-level search arm of Kelly Services. But he does add: "Both HUL and ITC counter that with job rotation and by changing job location."

Sure enough, ITC has drawn multiple initiatives to bring its lifers up to speed with the times. It engages with Ivy Leagues such as Harvard, Kellogg School of Management, Wharton School, Stanford University and London Business School, where lifers regularly go for refresher courses. ITC also clocks high training hours, of close to 1.1 lakh person-days of training a year. "The more the number of lifers, the more is the emphasis to re-invent themselves," says Nayak.