Why Quest Global's Pregnancy Loss Policy Targets a Talent Leak

Quest Global is not reporting earnings or issuing guidance. The engineering solutions company is rolling out a workplace policy for pregnancy loss support, backed by a YouGov survey it commissioned. The headline numbers: 78 million Indian women fear losing their jobs or facing negative career consequences if they disclose a miscarriage, while 80 million remain silent due to fear of judgment. 70 million women would consider leaving their jobs if employers did not offer support.

CEO Ajit Prabhu framed the initiative as a workforce issue, not simply a well-being program. “For too long, pregnancy loss has remained invisible in the workplace, leaving many women to navigate grief in silence while continuing to perform,” he said. “Our research shows that the cost of silence is significant and measurable: in productivity, confidence, retention and careers.”

The cost structure is the part that matters for anyone analyzing the engineering services sector. Replacing a skilled employee in STEM fields often runs 100% to 200% of annual salary when recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity are included. Quest Global is betting that a free support ecosystem – a 24-hour helpline with psychologists trained in pregnancy loss, peer-to-peer circles, and training materials for HR – will reduce attrition by addressing a hidden driver of turnover.

The Hidden Cost of Silence

The survey data provides a concrete baseline. Three in four women report that pregnancy loss reduces their confidence, and that confidence drop directly impacts performance. The connection to productivity is not abstract: a silent, grieving employee operating at reduced capacity for weeks or months represents a measurable output loss. For a company with multiple large engineering sites – including the Hyderabad office where the idea originated – that loss multiplies across teams.

Quest Global has not disclosed its own attrition rates or the cost of implementing the program. The company says the support services are available to any organization at no cost, meaning the expense is borne by Quest itself. The free distribution model is unusual: it signals that the company views the program as a shared industry standard, not a proprietary perk.

How the Survey Defines the Problem

The survey sampled 2,000 women and 200 men across India, ages 25-39, from STEM, tech, engineering, and corporate roles. That demographic matches Quest Global’s own talent pool. The company is an engineering services provider competing for female engineers with Larsen & Toubro, Tata Consulting Engineers, and global firms.

70 million women said they would consider leaving jobs without support. That is not a hypothetical walkout; it is a retention risk that HR departments can quantify. Quest Global’s policy directly targets that risk. The partnership with YourDOST gives the company an execution partner with existing expertise, reducing the learning curve.

Retention and Talent Competition in STEM

The initiative has early signatories: Bharat Serum, Amara Raja, Sterlite Technologies, Kone, and the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. These are not small players. The alliance creates a reference group that can pressure other employers in engineering, pharma, and tech to adopt similar policies. For Quest Global, being the first mover in a coalition of respected firms is a talent-brand advantage.

The Coalition Effect

Amara Raja and Sterlite Technologies are listed companies. Their participation in the campaign signals that board-level discussions on pregnancy loss support are already happening. If these companies see retention improvements, the rest of the sector will face pressure to follow.

Concern	Number/Percentage
Women who fear job loss or negative career consequences	78 million
Women who remain silent due to fear of judgment	80 million
Women who would consider leaving jobs if no support	70 million
Women reporting reduced confidence impacting performance	3 in 4

The table uses the survey’s own figures. 78 million and 80 million are overlapping groups – some women sit in both – the magnitudes make the point: the workforce cost is large enough to justify a policy that costs a fraction of a single hire's recruiting fee.

Implementation Mechanics and Execution Risk

The support ecosystem includes:

A 24-hour helpline with psychologists trained specifically in pregnancy loss

Peer-to-peer support circles

Training materials for HR professionals and managers

Confidential, expert support at no cost to any organization

Execution risk sits in two places. First, the helpline utilization rate. If employees do not call because of stigma or lack of awareness, the investment yields no return. Second, the manager training component. Managers who receive training do not apply the skills in daily conversation will fail to create the psychological safety the policy requires.

Risk to watch: Utilization rates of the helpline and manager training completion will determine whether the program generates measurable retention gains. Low adoption suggests the stigma remains unaddressed.

What Would Confirm the Thesis

A confirming signal would be a decline in voluntary turnover among female employees in the 12 months after launch, especially in the 25-39 age band. A cleaner signal would be survey data showing that employees feel more comfortable disclosing pregnancy loss and taking time off. Quest Global has not committed to publishing those metrics, the coalition structure may encourage transparency.

Sector Read-Through: The Talent Cost Benchmark

For investors in publicly traded engineering services and IT consulting firms, this policy is a leading indicator. The cost of replicating a similar program is not high – training materials and helpline partnerships are marginal expenses. The cost of not offering it, however, could be rising attrition premiums as female engineers compare benefits across employers.

The Free Distribution Model

Quest Global is offering the support services to any organization at no cost. That is a deliberate choice. The company sees more value in industry-wide adoption than in exclusivity. The main return comes from improving the talent pool overall, not from hoarding it. For a sector that competes for the same limited pool of female STEM graduates, a rising baseline of support policies reduces the risk that any single company’s investment becomes a competitive disadvantage.

The AlphaScala Take

The story is not about corporate empathy. It is about a company identifying a specific, measurable productivity and retention leak and designing a targeted fix. The survey data provides a denominator; the free distribution model creates a network effect. Quest Global is investing in a workforce stability tool that it hopes will also become a recruiting differentiator.

For anyone tracking the Indian engineering services sector, the next concrete markers are: whether other coalition members publish their own adoption rates, whether the program expands beyond the initial 2,000-user survey base, and whether Quest Global’s own attrition moves below the industry average. Those are the numbers that will tell whether the policy was an expense or an investment.

Practical rule: When a policy is offered free to competitors, the company sees more value in industry-wide adoption than in exclusivity. That implies the main return comes from improving the talent pool overall, not from hoarding it.