BPM firms brave storm of second Covid wave with help from easier WFH rules

An old rule barred work such as voice calls from home. DoT relaxed rules last November, allowing BPM and other service providers (OSPs) to work from anywhere in India

As the second wave of the pandemic rages, business process management (BPM) firms like Genpact, EXL, Teleperformance, and WNS have invoked their business continuity plans, shifted work either to other locations, or are focusing only on critical work within projects.

In a note to employees earlier this week, Tiger Tyagarajan, chief executive officer (CEO) of Genpact, said the grit and resilience of the firm’s teams were inspiring.

“Our operating teams are working with clients in prioritising work by process and sub-process, cross-training resources, maintaining additional bench, and distributing work globally to ensure timely delivery. I’m holding daily calls with my senior leadership team to assess the situation on a regional and client-by-client basis, and to address the needs of our people locally,” he said.

Industry sources have said in many cases teams were getting impacted or needed to take care of families infected by Covid-19.

“There has been work reprioritisation, team reallocations, and bench utilisation. In the BPM industry, 85-88 per cent were working from home from March. That is almost 98 per cent now. We have not heard of any struggle companies are facing since they have their business continuity plans in place,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president and chief strategy officer, National Association of Software and Services Companies.

France-based Teleperformance, which has a significant presence in India, said it had 75 per cent of its Indian workforce were working from home and delivering “zero disruption services”, and planned to scale this up to 85 per cent by June-end.

“Our employees can work in split shifts to support peak volumes and also address their personal time and priorities in the face of the current challenging times. We have also largely tapped into the part-time workforce, which is a big game changer for the industry -- these include defence veterans, new moms, senior citizens, and also people with special needs who till now were unable to participate,” said Aditya Arora, CEO, Teleperformance India.

During the past year, the company has hired people from 55 new cities, tier-2 and tier-3, to enable 100 per cent service delivery to clients, Arora added.

While most BPM firms are supporting employees and their families by providing them telemedicine help, arranging oxygen concentrators, and giving mental health support, the focus on delivery to clients also remains. 

“The vast majority of our client operations are being serviced remotely by our people working from the safety of their homes. In a few exceptional cases where work from home is not permitted -- or where employees have become ill and cannot work -- we have ramped up our staff in other offices and geographies to support the work delivered from India. We have cross-trained our teams wherever feasible in consultation with our clients to minimise any service disruption. We have also put in place overtime pay and weekend work hours, and we continue to utilise bench resources wherever necessary to keep things running smoothly,” said Rohit Kapoor, vice-chairman and chief operating officer, EXL.

Mumbai-based WNS says it has seen a minimal impact from the second wave so far, but the company has made several policy changes, depending on location and the extent of the pandemic. 

Keshav Murugesh, Group CEO, WNS, said: “One of our biggest learnings from the pandemic has been the manner in which we managed to overhaul the traditional Business Continuity Planning (BCP) model into a first-of-its-kind Pandemic Continuity Planning (PCP) model. WFH transition was never really a part of any conventional BCP model...We focused on enabling a seamless transition of work from our offices to employees’ homes – this included devising robust end-point strategies to minimise residual risks, deploying customized WFH solutions to ensure information security and data privacy, and boosting internet connectivity speeds at employees’ homes to offer consistent levels of delivery.”

A big relief for technology services, especially the BPM sector in India, was the Department of Telecom (DoT) permanently relaxing “work from home” guidelines for such firms.

An old rule forbade certain kinds of work (such as voice calls) from employees’ homes. After a couple of relaxations in rules last year, in November, the DoT issued guidelines which allow BPM and other service providers (OSPs) to work from home or anywhere in India.