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Call it an innovative HR practice or just another retention tool. Indias attrition-hit BPOs are knocking on college doors in smaller towns for entry-level requirements.
This is a major departure from the past, where international call centres were only interested in acquiring entry-level associates from the upmarket colleges of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.
An increasing number of HR heads feel that resources from the "not-so-high-end" colleges are more easily retainable. Industry sources say that during the last one year, leading international call centres, including Genpact, IBM Daksh, Convergys and Vertex, recruited an impressive 40% of their consolidated entry-level manpower requirement from colleges in smaller towns.
The silver lining is the fact that where overall attrition and dropouts at process levels in the industry added up to a huge 70%, among the newer target segment it was just 40%.
"For most people, having studied in a place like Delhi, a job in a call centre is just a stop-gap arrangement. Most inevitably leave the job for higher studies. In case of people from smaller towns, an aspirational value too is attached," says a senior HR official of a leading Gurgaon-based BPO.
But isnt it difficult to get a sizeable manpower having a high degree of proficiency in English from smaller towns? "Yes and no," says TN Hari, vice-president, strategic HR, IBM Daksh. "In most such cases, there is a high degree of mother-tongue influence (MTI).
However, there is a big chunk of scaleable and trainable people. They may require more time and personalised attention during the training process," he explains.
In fact, Hari feels that it makes for a sensible investment if you are getting retainable manpower by investing slightly more time, energy and resources.
According to Anupam Ahuja, VP, marketing, Office Tiger: "About 25% of our employees are from smaller towns. This arrangement works for both sides as we provide them with job opportunities they may not have in their hometowns. And it works for us as these people are able to clear our assessment tests and are easily trainable. We use educational institutes, colleges, job fairs to recruit."
It has a few cost advantages too. Not only is manpower more readily available in smaller cities, it also comes at a lower cost. "Its a good solution to go to tier-II and tier-III cities.
Firstly, available resources and secondly, costs in tier-I cities are rising. So going to smaller cities makes sense. Resources are easily available in smaller cities at a lower cost and training them is not too difficult either," says Srinivas, CFO and chief of shared services, Perot Systems, BPS.
A lot of thought goes into choosing the right cities. "Things to be considered while deciding which cities to tap are number of colleges and other educational institutes in the city, proximity and talent pool availability. A lot of BPOs are going this way to fill up the gap between demand and supply for qualified employees," adds Mr Srinivas.
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