India BPO Trends Blog

About two weeks back S a lady of about 40 years of age, wife of a friend of mine, mother of two girls including one appearing for her 10th standard exams was returning home from a party at Madh Island in Mumbai, India. The party went on till about the wee hours and it was about 6 am when she was riding on a two wheeler of one of her colleagues.

S was a process trainer in one of the leading call center BPOs. And it was the norm to throw a party by the BPO every quarter and all employees were expected to attend and ‘bond’ with each other.

While coming back…after probably one too many by the youngster who was ferrying her home, they had a fall and she injured her skull with a deep fracture. Bottom line is that she is in coma for the last 3 weeks. And no one know when she will come out of it.

Her daughter appearing for her 10th had to do so under such trying circumstances. The lack of medical facilities has left the family facing financial difficulties. When she will come out of coma is anybody’s guess.

Sorry for the sad part.

But the issue really is….what is the employer’s responsibility? If this were the US the employer would be sued for organizing a party and serving alcohol till the wee hours, to probably youngster who did not have the official permit to drink, and sending them home in two wheelers without helmets.

But it is Party time folks in BPO land. And such small incidences be damned.

In any situation when there is money to be made quickly, all kinds of folks rush in. VCs and other financial folks are the first to zoom in. They come in with OPM ( Other People’s Money , pronounced as opium ) and it can be as heady as the real thing and make folks do and think weirdly.

OPM props up new entrants who can indulge in the right rhetoric with little execution savvy and experience in the industry get into the business. Top level executives join them hoping to get a career break together with stock options piled in. They see financial freedom. Employees join in based on the antecedents of the top team. OPM makes the folks all around have a ball all the time. HR policies go out of sync with industry practices.

Clients get to them for want of a better due diligence process. VCs once invested are all interested in making their investments look good and bring work to their door. But ultimately, IMHO lack of experience shows. It separates the men from the boys.

Customers come for the sell speil but stay for the execution and delivery execellence.

Slowly a kind of burndown starts occurring. Bad news starts hitting the press. Folks say, ‘Oh…the BPO was another fad and died away’. What happened was that bad investments started showing their true colors. The good ones pick the remains, if desirable, consolidate and grow.

What remains for the folks who were part of the OPM group are the fond memories of the parties that they enjoyed in the ‘good old days’.

Venkat

Part of the Hype cycle of the BPO industry is the what I call the Party psyche that prevails today in most of this sector. The Party psyche implies that there is a crowd that strongly believes that life is an ongoing party. And there are certain folks who think that their objective is to skate to where the next party is happening.

It started in India from the advertising boom post liberalization when demand for advertising folks shot up and employees were wooed like hell. Then I have seen the financial services party when anyone and everyone who knew how to spell hire purchase, lease or amortization was given a car and a flat in a tony neighborhood.

At an international level we have all seen the excesses of the dot com party. While the US stories of this era are legion and well documented in India also we saw a Tsunami wave of this event hitting our shores.

After the IT burndown post dot com and Y2K both IT and BPO are the next happening parties in town. And naturally it attracts all the usual party goers as well as a few gatecrashers to boot.

Unfortunately very few believe that wealth is created by hardwork and sheer dint of effort. Luck, in my school of life, I was taught is the crossroads of hard work and opportunity.

How many in the current BPO sector are willing to roll up their sleeves and put in the 12+ hour days that it takes day in and day out to get somewhere in life? How many will skate to the next event in town?

Which kind of vendor will you choose?

Venkat