Taking The 'Fun' Out Of BPOs: Beware

Several factors determine an employee's job continuity. These factors
change with time, age, social responsibilities, career prospects, economic
compulsions and desires. The 24x7 BPO environments add their own factors like
biological reconditioning, getting used to a different identity, and change of
accent. In this multidimensional problem situation, the solution has to account
for the impact of all factors, to make the BPO a fun place to work in.

The news about BPOs wanting to turn serious from their current 'fun'
place positioning made interesting reading. The reason: continuing high
attrition rates. An article stated that the fun positioning had been adopted
because most executives were very young (even in their teens) and that according
to a research, this positioning would attract the target employees. However, the
strategy had failed to retain employees for longer terms. Will the new 'serious'
positioning work? Is it a knee jerk reaction to solve a problem that has
consistently plagued recruiters and employers? Do we really understand the
problem in all its complexity?

To begin with, I do not wish to claim that I have a magic wand and will
produce the right solution in a jiffy. But it may be worthwhile to evaluate the
situation from different perspectives and see where it leads us.

What Exactly Is Fun?

First of all, let us explore this 'fun' positioning stance. What do
youngsters who are about to take their first plunge into the corporate world,
understand when you tell them that a BPO is a fun place to work in. Chances are
that their references for fun are very different from what you probably want
them to understand. What does 'fun' mean to them?

Every business is serious business. Is the youngster's understanding of fun
compatible with the needs of the job? Are we really trying to create a fun
environment to match the general view and in the process work begins to suffer
in some way. Or is it that new entrants get a rude shock when they join and find
that fun isn't what they believed it would be.

There
is another perspective about fun that needs to be explored. Fun is generally
associated with a limited period activity, generally a short one. For instance,
some people like to have a 'fling' for fun. For them, it's a passing
affair. The good thing about fun is that it has a strong appeal. It has the
potential to draw you in. There is an element of curiosity and excitement about
what it's going to be like. When someone hesitates doing something, many times
you say, "Hey, try it. It's fun." So somewhere there may be an
association of transience associated with the term. Thus, the very strength of
fun's ability to draw people in could very well turn out to be its biggest
weakness in terms of keeping people there.

HR executives end up working with their backs to the wall, churning out event
after event of fun to sustain the excitement and match people's expectations
that they created in the first place. Reminds you of Frankenstein, does it?

Problems Plaguing BPOs

So what's this new 'serious' positioning of the BPO going to mean? Are
we saying that till now we did not consider it to be serious business? Are we
again falling into the trap of not giving it enough thought before starting
something? Most important, what is it now supposed to convey to the target
employees?

There are several factors that decide whether an employee will continue in
the job. These factors are dynamic and keep changing with time, age, social
responsibilities, career prospects, and of course economic compulsions and
desires. The 24x7 BPO environments add their own set of factors like biological
reconditioning.

In a multidimensional problem situation, the solution has to take into
account the impact of all factors. When you have a near homogeneous mix of
employees, who relate to these factors differently at different times, you have
a situation where the problem set is broken down into smaller groups of
different issues and hence is more manageable.

In a BPO environment as it is today, you have a predominance of one mix of
employees. Naturally, there is a predominance of similar factors affecting these
employees at the same time. For instance, most of them belong to the same age
group and would think of getting married at the same time — a major social
change that could alter life priorities and job preferences. When you have
different sets of people going through different life stages, the scale of
change in any one set of people is lower and therefore more manageable.

A lot is also said about the night shift being a key reason for high
attrition rates among BPOs. I am tempted to compare today's BPOs with
manufacturing units that also run three shifts. Why was attrition never really
such an issue with them? Could the people-mix factor as discussed above be the
reason?

Reasons To Move On

Even more is talked about the rising aspiration levels among youngsters,
which makes them switch jobs for a few hundred rupees. Hasn't every successive
generation had higher aspirations? So why blame the current lot? In this
particular case, the demand-supply principle is playing spoil sport for some and
creating opportunities for others. First, you offer higher salaries to net the
guy. Then you blame him when he accepts higher salaries from others. He is only
maximizing his returns while the going is good.

Would the BPO offer the same salaries when there is a glut of people for
these jobs? Doesn't this situation remind us of software companies during the
dotcom days? So what's the fuss?

Then there is the question of identity. In a voice BPO, how do employees cope
up with frequently changing identities as they speak to people in other
countries and then to people back home? How do their relatives and friends react
to their new found accents? How much do they like being someone they are not,
and for how long?

So while fun may not exactly have been the right term, I am not sure that 'serious'
is either in that same sense. As I said, every business is serious business. But
do you really want to project this as a life and death situation?

What is important is whether employees are happy doing the work that they do?
Are they deriving satisfaction from it or is it a chore? Fun or not, they need
to enjoy doing something if they are to think of it in terms of a career and
produce results.

The moot question, therefore, is, whether people are switching jobs within
the BPO industry, or is a larger percentage of people quitting the industry
itself. If this number as a percentage of the base increases, then the BPO
industry has a real cause to worry. For, it could mean that people are not
enjoying their work. To draw an analogy from the field of Aviation, enjoyment is
the up-thrust that sustains the effort (speed) to deliver performance (height).

The author is VP, HR and Head of Training and Consulting Business at RT
Outsourcing Services and can be contacted at sumeet@rtservices.com