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For the thousands of hopefuls joining the ITES
sector, their major source of insecurity is the short-lived career
promises of the industry—a stop-gap option before the great
career dream materialises. It is also one of the factors that has
in no small measures contributed to the high rate of attrition.
ITES players have, in fact, been making assiduous efforts to dispel
this mindset and chalk out long-term career streams for their employees.
This trend has increasingly been on the rise, as evident from the
recent Nasscom-Hewitt salary survey findings which state that there
has been a 14 percent increase in the number of companies offering
a formalised career path to its employees.
For an ITES organisation it is not an easy task—to
rein in a generation which evidently wants to move too fast in too
short a time on the career track. Intelenet offers career growth
options to its agents after two years. “People seem to be in
a great hurry. They want to jump to the team lead position. They
run for positions prematurely instead of waiting for the opportune
time,” says Manuel D’Souza, head of HR at Intelenet Global
Services.
At Infowavz, right at the recruitment stage,
the career path is communicated to the employee along with the job
description and key result areas (KRAs). “Our career planning
sheet outlines the organisational structure and the skill sets required
for various functions and at various levels of the enterprise. Apart
from this, each individual’s competencies, strengths and areas
of improvement are evaluated under a comprehensive ‘training
needs analysis’ (TNA) programme both for current as well as
future roles. This includes face-to-face counselling as well as
psychometric profiling. As an outcome of this, we are able to clearly
chart out and communicate specific career options for our people
and work with them to help them build skill sets and bridge gaps
that would enable them to develop their careers effectively,”
informs Zia Shiekh, CEO of Infowavz International. He adds that
this is not just done at the point of recruitment, but at regular
intervals, including during performance appraisal cycles.
Prudential Process Management Services (PPMS),
the captive BPO arm of Prudential UK, in fact, chalked out career
paths for its employees even before setting up its operations in
India. “This was part of the Organizational Design Study, which
was put together with the support of the global HR team,” states
Atul Sharma, director of HR at PPMS.
Various streams
Intelenet offers three career paths to its employees—vertical
(agent/team leader/team manager/ operations manager), horizontal
(across functions) and progress to parent company (TCS or HDFC).
The company has made it clear to the agents that 70 percent promotions
are from within and 30 percent are hired from outside. If the agent
does not want to be a team leader after two years but wants to be
involved in HR/Training/Operations, etc, he is allowed to move diagonally
across functions. “Furthermore, following two years if someone
wants to move from nightshift work environment to day working they
are given the first option if there is a vacancy in the parent organisations.
This is however purely on merit basis,” adds D’Souza.
PPMS also offers vertical as well as lateral
movements to its employees. “As part of the strategy, employees
have the option of moving from one process to the other, enhancing
their value,” adds Sharma. The streams include: Domain specialists,
support function specialists and global exchange programme.
The BPO industry has varied career options and
functional specialisation, for instance project management, IT,
migration, business process consultancy, training, HR, finance and
accounts, quality, business analysis, sales, marketing, proposal
development, etc. Shiekh points out that for many youngsters, this
can be quite confusing and they need guidance about both their competencies
as well as the job profile and skills requirements in each of these
areas. “To help them, we provide our people with various resources
(e.g. “day in the life of an operations manager”, “day
in the life of a product trainer”, etc) to enable them to better
understand the breadth and depth of various roles in the organisation.
As a result, people have a better grasp what different positions/functions
entail and they can make intelligent career decisions,” he
adds.
Training needs
Most organisations do continuous training need
analysis of the employees. Intelenet has got many of its employees
COPC (Customer Operations Perfor-mance Centre) certified apart from
sponsoring them for ‘Train the Trainer’ programme. Besides,
employees have also been sponsored for domain specialisation training
abroad. People are also sent to prestigious management institutions
for seminars and conferences. D’Souza reveals that the company
is currently in the process of tying-up with one of Mumbai’s
well-known management colleges for a two-year management degree
programme which its employees can do, while simultaneously working
with the organisation.
At eFunds when an employee joins the company,
he/she gets a Magic Score Card which is a “training passport”.
The company operates in three areas—financial services, telecom
and retail. Apart from training in domain expertise, eFunds Intern-ational
lays a lot of emphasis on equipping its employees with leadership
skills. Atul Kunwar, managing director of global outsourcing with
eFunds Intern-ational, says, “There is a whole range of other
skills. For those interested in enhancing their writing talent we
have a tie-up with NETg, while those wanting programming skills
are encouraged to take the relevant courses.”
The company also encourages it employees to join
the transition team, which gives them a global explosure. “We
are not just in India but in the US too so when they go there, it
is also a home for them,” adds Kunwar.
Infowavz, informs Shiekh, has a one-year “management
development programme” (MDP), specifically meant for MBAs who
join the company fresh after their post-graduate business administration
degrees. The “accelerated career development” (ACD) programmes
are for highly-driven and motivated individuals who are constantly
looking for new challenges and need opportunities to utilise their
energies. Then there is the “team innovation” (TI) programme
for star performers who get involved at the “pilot” or
“proof-of-concept” stages of new programs.
Curtailing attrition
These effort will evidently make a great difference
to curtail the high rate of attrition in the industry. Explains
Shiekh: “People don’t want to leave an organisation if
they feel that they are constantly learning and upgrading their
skills. By articulating a very clearly defined career path and by
ensuring development programmes for their people, Indian BPO companies
can be far more effective in reducing attrition rather than just
raising salaries constantly to prevent people from leaving.”
Sharma agrees that this will have a significant
impact on attrition: “It will convert the employees who just
want to temporarily transition through the industry to becoming
serious players...and key contributors to the organisation and the
industry.”
While a formal career path might make a lot of
difference for those seeking serious careers in the industry, for
many it is the glamour of the environment and fringe benefits which
attracts them in the first place to the sector and also remain in
it for a few years, at least.
sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com
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