Outsourcing and relevance of it in HR field especially for India - A news article write up by me.

1. With Indian BPO entering its third phase of evolution, do you think that a BPO career is evolving to become thing more than just a call centre? Why?

Of course the BPO career is much more than a call centre. One must notice that all BPO firms today; big/small do offer a proper hierarchical structure -right from an entry level employee to the top, no matter whether these fresh graduates/applicants ask for the same. The BPO industry is seeing a lot of growth not in terms of business/industry but more importantly growth in Value, be it customers, delivery, processes and employees. This growth in value also brings in better quality people and greater job challenges leading to have complex work to be addressed by well qualified manpower. And better qualified manpower would work in a career which has growth and learning in it.


What are the new kinds of opening in that are coming in?

BPO’s are either Voice based or Non Voice based. But off late BPO firms in India have added a host of new careers with expanding operations/roles and responsibilities. The new kind of openings would include increasing role on existing processes and ways to improve the same. Hence the role of Quality and Process, their inter-relations. Other new careers in BPO would be in Operations, Knowledge Management, Training skills, data Security etc.

3. Does this provide long term career prospective?

Today BPO firms are giving a lot of care in planning an employee’s career. This holds true for all levels of hierarchy. The industry is facing dual threats from an acute shortage of qualified manpower coupled with a very high rate of attrition. Hence employers are taking extra care to offer a proper career and hierarchy for the BPO employees. It is not limited to any particular BPO work. Many BPO firms have senior level executives, having started their career from entry level job. This is precisely BPO companies are looking for and would like to happen more. For the BPO industry in India, these are the right steps for further growth and consolidation.


If BPO of today has become more than just a customer care service, it means the expectations out of the BPO training institutes are also expanding in terms of the kind of manpower they prepare.
YOU’RE COMMENTS ON THE SAME.
Yes this is certainly an area to be tapped and expanded upon. There needs proper training company nexus more like we find in the software industry. Hence going forward we need to have training institutes which support the growing needs of the BPO industry on a proactive basis. In fact it would be good if the industry starts setting certain Training Best practices and the institutes follow the same to deliver Human Assets as future human capital. Training institutes need not just have mere expansion in terms of manpower or greater people but need to give more importance on Quality of the human capital and the processes it follows. I would go ahead and just a comprehensive ranking of the best training institutes for this industry on the basis of certain measurable parameters.


How do you plan to prepare the BPO manpower of tomorrow?
The BPO manpower should have thorough knowledge on the niche domain/vertical that each employee is working on. The trend in the BPO sector is a very gradual but constant move up the value chain. Hence in the longer term we will have to see more and more people transitioning from mere voice/non voice transactions to more complex tasks. This is a very good sign for everyone. Hence the manpower needs to have better knowledge/understanding of the existing/new processes; must me better equipped on Quality; have greater roles responsibilities/tasks. Hence the manpower of tomorrow for the industry need to be prepared to have constant skill up gradation with more maturity in task execution.
With non IT players, like BFSI, telecom, airlines etc. entering BPO, there is more and more need for domain expertise. How do you plan to catch up with this?
Precisely true is the above statement. The industry going forward need to be divided on the basis of verticals/domains and the value that these would generate, already firms are working on these criteria. We are on this track as far both our employees and client is concerned. Hence we have our hierarchy architecture drawn on the basis of domains/skills exhibited and try consolidating the same. Thus I have personally seen a lot of positives from the clients end as well as from the employees and greater clarity in our day to day work vis-à-vis the goals set.
Do you think that the demand from BPO players’ w.r.t the kind of manpower they are looking for has changed over the past one year? To what extent and HOW?
Yes this is one thing which has defiantly changed for the better. The BPO industry is choosier and is very importantly on the look out for the “right kind of employee”. This change has resulted due to various factors, more due to this demand – supply of manpower imbalance perception. But truly speaking, the BPO industry is bleeding with high attrition rates. Hence the industry is giving extra care in getting the “right fit”. The selection processes are getting more scientific with more usage/involvement of technology in hiring the right candidate. More thought is put on getting proper mix for a given job profile and greater role is being given to Human Resource Outsourcing firms, who are better able to adapt and implement such tasks for the industry.
How have you catched up with this change?
Yes we have and being in this industry and seeing the churns for sometime now we are geared up on this front.
What are the weak points with today's BPO trainers?
Today’s trainers give a lot more impetus on voice based training. The training also does not involve a lot on career planning but more on to cashing in this BPO industry growth wave. The trainers are more inclined on giving greater thrust on language but there are a host of other major factors which needs equal attention, if not more. These would be more on the work, etiquettes, ethics and data/information security – to mention a few
How do you plan to counter those?
We give a lot more importance on training ourselves. All the employees go through a mandatory training programme every quarter for given period of time, no matter how senior/junior one is. Also all new employees do go through compulsory induction training programme. More important the trainers are trained and assessed/monitored by the experts on a very regular basis. We encourage a lot of feedbacks and it has value as the employee sees genuine feedbacks getting implemented. Thus to me we are on the move in a very right direction.
Demand for foreign language skills, apart from English, is also rising. How are BPO trainers planning to catch up with this?
Foreign language skills are very much an important ingredient of the industry as we move to newer geographies and clients. We have a two pronged strategy to counter this. Off late we have a lot of foreigners coming and working with our employees, here in India. These foreigners are more preferred from those nations where we have our clients or we are prospecting for one. This helps the employees/trainers to better understand their culture and many other nuances. We are also giving preference, recruiting trainers having additional foreign language proficiency. BPO trainers need to have multiple foreign language skills to become more important for the job market and also to be better prepared for a job.