Ice People: Pankaj Vaish, head of Accenture

Mentoring the Indian BPO

, head of Accenture is not your regular head of a global business process outsourcing (BPO) operations.

He began working on BPO long before it even entered the Indian lexicon. His initial years were spent in Accenture's Chicago offices where he was instrumental in developing strategies for global corporations seeking to enter the Indian software and BPO market, and helping them set up their operations in India.

In 1988 he was transferred to head Accenture's Indian business. Says Vaish, "We were building this business from scratch but our goals were clear in India. We wanted to leverage our global capabilities to provide quality service from India without losing our focus on the valuable human resources."

Vaish's efforts paid off. Today, Accenture India is the only contact centre in the world to achieve the COPC Gold Standard Certification. It has also received the eSCM certification (Level 3).

The company has a 4000-strong workforce. But managing such a huge workforce is not easy as attrition in the BPO sector is high.

But Vaish likes to keep his employees happy. He has introduced the concept of "town halls", borrowed from the archaic system of governance but nonetheless used in modern times, where he spends time with employees discussing, brainstorming and getting feedbacks.

Other small initiatives include keeping the employees family involved and happy "" he sends chocolates to wives of direct employees recognising their support to the success of his team.

In March 2005, Accenture Global named Vaish as one of the 48 partners for Horizon 2012 "" an initiative to anticipate, and influence the trends in the marketplace for Accenture's growth beyond the foreseeable future.

For a person who spends a majority of his time getting new clients for the company, he finds mentoring his employees the best part about his work.