A vast domestic market, availability of low-cost and highly skilled workers and general economic growth have given a boost to BPOs and KPOs. To help build a workforce that can perform future leadership roles, transformational training is the need of the hour, says Sachin Adhikari
According to a recent study, India, at present commands 37 per cent of the global market for IT services and IT-based business processes. The global market is currently worth some $60 billion and will continue to show strong growth. India’s key comparative advantage is its availability of well-trained, English-speaking and inexpensive specialists.
Indian IT giants companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS and many more are developing their R&D capabilities and expanding well beyond their traditional vendor roles to emerge and evolve from BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) to KPOs (Knowledge Process outsourcing). This reflects a shift in the kind of skill sets required by the industry.
A vast domestic market and the availability of low-cost, highly skilled workers along with general economic growth have given a boost to BPO and KPO industries. India is being eyed as one of the fastest growing economies and according to a study; it will be the youngest country in the world with 64 per cent of our population being of the working age. Therefore, BPOs and KPOs will play an important role in employing India’s youth in the coming years.
International companies often save 40 to 50 per cent by shifting work from their home base to India on several accounts but none of them will direct white-collar work to India for long if it doesn’t get standards of service at least as high as those it is used to at home.
Therefore, though our huge English speaking population and cheap labour are the main advantages that bring overseas business to India, such businesses demand our resources to be trained enough to handle international clients and customers. Since most of these services involve direct dealing with them, soft skills along with technical knowledge become very crucial for the sector.
There are some challenges typical to the BPO sector which needs to be checked in order to ensure that the country gets its share of overseas market. The biggest challenge is the high rate of attrition. The average call centre employee in an Indian BPO is between 21 to 30 years of age.
Many BPOs target fresh graduates or even undergraduates who are most likely to join because of the high pay packages and perks like pickup and drop facilities, tie- up with premier educational institutes for part time management degrees and lucrative incentives for performing well. Job loyalty is minimal in this age group and this young workforce is spoilt for choices with competitors always trying to lure them with better salaries and incentives.
The average attrition rate in a voice-based BPO is around 22 per cent and attrition costs the company not only by way of the resources spent per head but also by affecting the quality of service due to lack of experienced workforce. BPOs still offer the highest pay packages at entry level positions as compared to other industries and yet it is an ongoing struggle for companies to find ways to address employee dissatisfaction that comes from doing monotonous work, low morale caused by occasional interactions with foreign customers (in voice based processes) or the health problems that arise from working in shifts. Also, opportunities for vertical movement within the organisation are few and far between, directly affecting job satisfaction in the long run.
The other huge challenge is finding employable candidates for the jobs. Though India has a huge English speaking population, they are usually lacking in areas of pronunciations, clear diction and understanding of the language. As a result, the company needs to expose them to vocational trainings to prepare them for the job which may be possible for the bigger organisations, but may not be so for smaller organisations with financial constraints.
Also, most training focus on developing skills that are required for the job like spoken English, which are definitely crucial, but fail to address issues like motivation and leadership and life-skills which can help in checking their attrition rates. Often the traditional trainings impart the required technical and soft skills but forget that motivation is the key to optimising productivity.
What we need are trainings which can motivate individuals to give their best at whatever they do. let’s not forget that BPOs usually work odd hours to cater to their off-shore clients which also mean that the workforce can rarely relate to their customer base. Often, the culture diversities require them to speak in a particular accent, use special names (to match the customer’s nationality), etc. All of this can be stressful and even monotonous for the workers. Motivational trainings become crucial to keep them inspired and can help a great deal in checking attrition, which is a key issue for this sector.
Before designing any training module, what is required is an in-depth research to understand the requirements of that particular industry and work on improving those and that is how each of our modules are designed keeping in mind the unique requirements of the BPO industry.
They include workshops by stalwarts from the industry to inspire the resources and feel proud of what they do on one hand and understand what is expected of them to perform better, on the other. Also, leadership development is a key area focused upon in such trainings to help build a workforce that can perform in future leadership roles with time.
Conventional trainings often fail to keep track of progress or monitor if what the trainees are actually applying what they learnt. Transformational trainings keep in touch with the company representatives to ensure that they can help re-model their modules if required or focus on the particular aspect of the training that may have worked best with the resources.
Therefore, the most important challenge for the BPO sector is people recruiting, motivating, recognising, rewarding, and developing them. People are the only sustainable, long-term source of competitive advantage for providers as well as buyers.
What India needs to do to survive as the world’s back office is broaden and strengthen its education programmes with focus on both vocational and soft skills trainings to create this required workforce and control attrition and train the existing employees in a way that motivates them to give their best, both equally crucial for the sector to thrive. The writer is transformational training designer and chief mentor of Viztar International Pvt ltd