New Delhi, July 21 -- Last week a post by Vedika Bhaia, a Mumbai-based co-founder of a marketing and branding start-up, blew up on LinkedIn. It began with a counter-intuitive remark that resonated with many on the professional networking platform: "We fired 3 people in one month and our retention actually improved."

Bhaia went on to explain that over the last year her agency saw an alarming rate of attrition in spite of paying competitive salaries, allowing flexible work hours, and giving out decent perks. Talent still kept quitting every month, until she decided to look deeper and lay off underperformers.

Bhaia followed it up with changes in the culture and ethos of the company. She rented a physical office space instead of operating f...