Business Process Outsourcing brings so many benefits to so many people in ways that are not understood in the developed nations where we take modern work practices and opportunities for granted. If we remember the words, ‘feed a man fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he will feed himself for life.”
A handful of Asian-based providers, seeing opportunity in extending their service offering and aware of first world companies growing appetite for cost reduction, began to extend their service offering beyond information technology into the same areas of work and processes that big companies were engaged in. Along the way, their investments in systems and scale began to pay off, and the case for BPO grew to encompass not just cost advantage but also increased quality and effectiveness as supplied by a growing army of highly educated and enthusiastic knowledge workers.
A recent review of business reading out of Australia shows that there is a more enlightened, strategic view of outsourcing and off shoring that is starting to emerge as managers get a better fix on its potential and also review their operating costs at the back end of the Global financial crisis. Many executives are discovering outsourcing is really about corporate growth, making better use of skilled staff, and even job creation internally. It is true, that the Labour savings from outsourcing can be substantial. But it is peanuts compared to the enormous gains inefficiency, productivity, quality, and revenues that can be achieved by fully leveraging offshore talent.
All of this activity is trickling down to the man or woman in the street and provides an opportunity for less fortunate people to get a piece of the action and carve out a better life for their families.
The following story from The State Times of India is a great example of how the little people get to participate in a bigger game and it makes the world a better place for all of us.
A rice-and-coconut farmer in Tamil Nadu’s Salem wouldn’t allow his daughter who studied engineering to venture out for work. But 22-year old Alphonsa was resolute. She dragged her father to a ‘Family Day’ organised by a new BPO run by NextWealth Entrepreneurs, 27 km from Salem in Mallasamudram. He went around the centre; saw computers, other women at work, their managers and other people who manage the office. He was somewhat convinced his daughter too could work.
Alphonsa now tutors students in the US, UK, and Australia mathematics online, pays for her sister’s study, and also saves for her marriage. “If I was not working here, my parents would have forced me to get married early. Now, there is less pressure. They respect my views,” she says.
The ‘touch & feel’ sessions for family members have become a major activity for BPOs as they scout the hinterlands for employees. This often involves opening channels of dialogue with families of women. ‘To help candidates make up their minds, rural BPOs have adopted flexible working hours, convinced property owners around their centres to start offering paying guest (PG) accommodation, grant subsidised food, and have heavily resorted to word-of-mouth promotions.
Rural BPOs have successfully conveyed the message that women can supplement the family’s primary income.
Recruits are often paid 10-15 per cent more than mandatory minimum wages, over Rs 72,000 per annum. (A$1,800) Engineering graduates earn even more. British BPO firm Xchanging employs 400 at its two rural BPOs at Shimoga in Karnataka, of whom 42 per cent are women. Data Halli, a rural BPO run by JSW Foundation at Vijaynagar in Karnataka’s Bellary district employs only women: about 120 of them. So does Piramal Foundation’s BPO ‘Source for Change’, housed in a small town called Bagar in Rajashthan’s Jhunjhunu District.Even bigger BPOs exploring “hub (city) and spoke (villages)” models to reduce margin pressures have reported encouraging numbers of women employees from towns which are rather conservative. Raj Patil, president of MphasiS’ BPO division, says the firm recently set up a 500-seat centre at Raipur, where a quarter of the workforce is female. Across all its centres in tier II and IV towns, Aditya Birla Minacs has 4,000 employees, of whom 900 are women.
Minacs has hired older women – aged 40 to 55 – at its latest centre in Ranchi. “Once they gain good experience working, they will go and spread the word. Their children are all in college and the strategy will eventually lead to more young people joining us,” Godbole says. Many women employees, he says, come from agricultural families and look to peers for inspiration.
We show them pictures of employees who went to London from Shimoga for transition work. This becomes a motivation,” he adds.
