In an attempt to reduce attrition and attract new employees, Infosys Technologies plans to give a 17 percent salary increase this year for more than 100,000 of its employees.

Infosys Technologies Chief Executive, S. Gopalakrishnan, says, “There will be a war for talent and it’s one of our biggest worries in the medium to short term.” With customers projected to outsource more projects to reduce operational costs, outsourcing vendors need to handle double digit attrition rates and guarantee continuous service.

An increase in demand for outsourcing services is expected this year, that’s why the Indian BPO industry expects to hire an estimated 150,000 new employees.

Aside from the increased demand on outsourcers, the other driving forces behind the salary hike are the improving market condition and the implementation of iRace, an employee rating system to grade employees based on their roles. Almost 4,500 employees quit because of iRace, while nearly 2,500 were promoted. Through iRace, Infosys was able to evaluate and improve the standard of their manpower.

The salary increase will cost Infosys $135 million. “This is the largest-ever salary hike given by any company in the IT industry,” said Infosys VP for HR TV Mohandas Pai.

India used to be the go-to outsourcing vendor for the voice-based BPO industry, but there are companies like TCS and Wipro for instance, that have started to take their business elsewhere due to the lack of quality workforce.

The companies that have shifted to other outsourcing vendors find the workforce from Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru more appealing because they have better voice agents and are readily available. Accenture, IBM, TCS and Unisys have recognised the region’s advantages and have expanded their companies to Latin America, making the region the new BPO hotspot. As for Wipro Technologies, it has developed its new global delivery centre at Curritiba, Brazil very recently. This expands Wipro’s BPO and IT portfolio to serve roughly 20 clients.

Raman Roy, a pioneer of the Indian BPO industry, chairman and managing director of Quatrro BPO Solutions, has this to say: “We have not finetuned our skill sets. Appetite for this industry is huge, but our tier-II and tier-III colleges are producing mostly educated unemployable youth. Quality of the workforce in the BPO industry today is not good.”

Omega Healthcare Management Services CEO & President Gopi Natarajan affirms Roy’s statement. “We are still short on English language skills. BPOs train people for 12-15 weeks here, but still they are not ready, whereas in places like Colombo, we give training for three to four weeks and they are ready to head for work. Latin America is making huge strides.”

For Ramesh Kamath, Aditya Birla Minacs’ chief financial officer, companies are venturing to Latin America because it is closer to the US. “People from Latin America can relate to the US better, compared to those from India. Voice accent is a limited issue, not the whole.”

According to industry experts, the Indian BPO industry’s attrition rate of 10-11% is a turn off.

Other advantages of Latin American BPO that attract companies are nearshore advantages, faster response time and superior technical support.

Personality Plus Consultants India managing partner, Santosh George has this to add: “Most of these countries may also have an agreement to transfer technology that makes it more conducive for their business requirements.”

In 2009, there were clients that had issues with the communication skills of their Indian BPO workforce. An example of this is Wipro, who had this problem with its client, KLM.

S Nagarajan, founder of 24/7 Customer and a pioneer in the Indian BPO industry, says, “Several Indian IT players got into the voice business without any real expertise, which resulted in many clients going away.”

KPMG global head of sourcing Kumar Parakala adds, “Only the top ones are growing, while others are struggling. Organically, growth is just about 10%-15%; so they have to look at inorganic growth.”

Leading Californian life sciences companies announced they’re creating stronger ties with China to develop drugs and delivery channels into a modernizing China.

Similarly, business trade groups like BIOCOM are sending contingents to China to create partnerships with the government and development officials for cross-promoting products and services abroad.

Joe Panetta, Chief Executive Officer of BIOCOM- a locally based group that represents about 500 life sciences industries said, “We’re developing a strategy to more proactively promote all the services we can provide out of San Diego.”

Panetta also said that next month the association plans to sign a memorandum of understanding with a Beijing development organization. The aim is to create a kind of ties that will drive business in both countries.

Panetta remarked, “We hear a lot about the concern of outsourcing to China — that they have cheap labor. While they might have low-cost labor in terms of people who can do basic research, run sequencing machines and analyze data, they have very little experience when it comes to developing those products and commercializing those products.”

By means of linking BIOCOM with Beijing, Panetta acknowledged, corporations concerned with increasing valuable commercialization skills will have an opportunity for doing business.

Whereas China has completed a huge increase in its manufacturing and drug testing processes, industry commentators state that it has much knowledge to gain from the United States in terms of constructing fresh life sciences businesses and bringing drugs to the Chinese market.

A privately held startup based in Camel valley – Huya Bioscience International, is leveraging its partnerships with Chinese educational institutions and research centers concerned with advancing their commercial skills. Huya’s group of China-based “drug hunters” also taking advantage from the tie – they obtain a direct look at compounds Huya might look to on-license.

An anti-arrhythmic drug entrant and a treatment for cancer are the two of the products that the company will promote.

President and CEO of Huya, Mireille Gingras said, “We’re capitalizing on the explosion and growth of the Chinese biopharma industry,” and “We reduce the risk, the cost and the time because we in-license compounds that are already validated in China.”

In order to speed up their study, cut costs linked with preclinical and clinical trials, or both, other San Diego-based drug developers are building closer partnerships with China.

Analysis group Gartner says that the degree of outrage directed at outsourcing IT jobs to India is unwarranted, considering its actual effect on the local IT industry.

Gartner claims that Indian software developers have only secured 2 percent of the Australian IT industry’s AU$3.585 billion market – AU$71.71 million for development and integration services.

Among a number of medium-sized companies and smaller firms, there were five Indian companies that acquired the majority of work outsourced to India from Australia. These companies were Infosys Technologies, Pentasoft, Satyam, Tata Consulting Services, and three companies from the HCL group. These companies had a posted growth of as much as 36 percent.

“These companies can be pleased with this achievement as their competitors are all registering single-digit growth,” said Rolf Jester, Asia Pacific VP for Research at Gartner. “However in the scheme of things, this is a small share of the market. Certainly, it is disproportionate to the large amount of opposition to offshore outsourcing that has been expressed in Australia in the last few months.”

“Opposition will eventually die away as Australian companies take advantage of the quality and cost benefits and realise there is more to be gained economically by embracing, not resisting, the global delivery model,” declared Jester, saying that the local IT industry regarded offshore outsourcing as a threat to their jobs, causing it to be criticised by different government representatives.

The top 10 companies in the local software development and integration sector comprised 46 percent of the total market, or AU$1.649 billion. The forerunner among these top 10 companies is IBM GSA, which will soon establish roots in Ballarat.

The call center outsourcing industry has been acknowledged as one of the main factors that underpinned India as a global economic power. Such unprecedented growth comes at a price, and the country’s outsourced workers are paying for it.

Many young professionals who work for the outsourcing industry are starting to realise that behind excellent compensation and appealing career possibilities are seemingly never ending hours of appeasing irate customers, hard to meet quotas, long night shifts, disrupted eating and sleeping schedules, constant deadline pressure.

As a result, outsourced workers suffer from backaches, migraines, anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, obesity, and broken relationships. These may have further consequences later on such as heart, kidney, or liver disease, diabetes, chronic mental illness, or even suicide.

The problems that outsourcing industry workers encounter have gotten worse ever since the global economic downturn last year. Fear of losing their jobs has only added to the daily pressure they have to overcome.

Karuna Baskar, Director of the counselling firm 1to1help.net, says the number of workers coming in with mental health issues such as bi-polar disorder and suicidal tendencies has increased dramatically.

Many outsourced workers come straight from universities and into their first jobs with little or no real life experience. They struggle to adjust from the freedom of a school environment to the more rigorous and disciplined office environment, but there are those who cannot cope, reveals Aashu Calapa. Calapa, Executive VP of HR for Firstsource Solutions, claims that the outsourcing industry loses a percentage of its workers due to stress. These young men and women are not stress hardy and do not have the life experience required to handle some times very aggressive customers and tend to take abuse personally.

Many of these young knowledge workers unwind by spending their hard-earned money by living recklessly. Work and peer pressure, plus the fast lifestyle make their lives more taxing, and not everyone can juggle these western standards along with other more conservative traditional aspects of their lives.

The outsourcing industry is apprehensive at what really goes on with its workers. There are companies that have already taken steps to help their workers, such as providing doctors, on-call counsellors, nutritionists, health benefit, and gym facilities.

A new Sydney-based chief of global outsourcing and infrastructure services for the Asia Pacific region has been selected by Unisys.

The full responsibility for Unisys outsourcing business in Asia Pacific was taken over by Australian Scott Whyman, who has been promoted to the position of VP and general manager for Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services (GOIS).

Most recently, Whyman was based in Singapore as VP and general manager for Unisys Asia, that has China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, The Philippines, and Singapore under its scope. He has 25 years of IT and outsourcing expertise as well as 15 years of working experience at Unisys.

Whyman was a former sales and general manager in Unisys Australia and New Zealand, and prior to joining Unisys he was the managing director of the PCS Group, a private Australian technology and services firm. He was also the divisional chief marketing officer for Australian Consolidated Press (ACP).