BPOs Bet on Staff Retention Ways Amid Competition

The India's BPO industry, which provides millions of jobs, is embracing employee-friendly policies such as job enrichment and innovative pay structures to arrest high attrition levels, according to HR experts.

Going by estimates, attrition levels in this industry is in the range of 30 to 55 per cent.

"Attrition levels in BPO industry is much higher compared to many other industries and today we see this rate tottering at around 50?55 per cent," MeritTrac innovation & product management head, Rajeev Menon said.

"Yet, we have noticed that the industry has settled down and attrition levels have been reducing," Mr Menon added.

MeritTrac is a talent assessment firm.

Faced with high attrition rates, BPO players are making significant investments in resources and employee welfare services apart from adapting well-designed processes for performance review, experts opined.

"Job enrichment / enhancements, training programmes and innovative pay structures are being offered. Employee benefits have enhanced and some of the BPOs are offering off-shore assignments which is acting as a motivation for many," Mr Menon said.

Indian BPO industry has started to consider employing various strategies including increasing the absolute numbers of skill pool availability, bringing training and access to niche skills to a larger group of trainable population, setting up businesses in rural areas, Spectrum Talent management director Vidur Gupta said.

According to executive search firm Mancer Consulting, attrition rates in the BPO/KPO sector has been above 30 per cent.

"In the last five years, India has lost one million jobs in the customer contact business to countries like the Philippines. Over 40,000 jobs were lost to Egypt itself in the time period 2008-2013," it said.

As per the consulting firm, India's BPO/KPO sector currently employs a workforce of 1.98 million directly and 7.5 million indirectly.

One of the reasons cited for BPO jobs moving away to foreign shores such as Philippines is rise in Indian salary levels.

"From past few years Indian BPO industry is facing stiff competition from BPO service providers in Philippines, Ireland, Brazil, Canada and Poland and one of the reason is that these countries are able to provide cost effective alternatives," Mr Gupta said.

Experts also felt that major challenge faced by BPO industry would be to recruit, motivate, reward and develop talent in their ranks.