India-bashing in BPO sector opposed

Contrary to the American concept, India is not to be downgraded, especially in the business process outsourcing (BPO) segment, said Jim Iyoob, director, operations, Effective Teleservices Incorporation (ETI).

He was speaking at a panel discussion on 'Attracting and retaining human resource (HR)' in Ahmedabad on Saturday.

"We look for attitude, body language and one-word answer. We hire agents who know their job best or understand basic computer applications. We ask them what is their specialty and identify at least one core strength. Elsewhere, HR heads spend most of their time in finding faults and fixing them.. At ETI, we reward them with money, incentives, ongoing training, best working condition among others," said Iyoob.

ETI runs two call centres in the US and one at Infocity in Gandhinagar.

The discussion was arranged by the Ahmedabad chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE) on one of the most pressing challenges facing Gujarat in information technology, IT-enabled services, BPO, pharmaceuticals and research, especially among the small and medium entrepreneurs.

"There is no choice but to invest on people in knowledge-based industries even if some quit," said the top executives and HR heads of several Ahmedabad-based sunrise companies at the programme.

Most of the penalists believed that HR is the biggest asset in the knowledge-based industries and attracting and retaining HR is the most difficult task for HR heads.

"We have always tried to instill a sense of belonging or ownership in our staff and treated them with dignity as partners rather than knowledge workers. Transparency and honesty have paid dividends so far," said Pratul Sharoff, managing director, e-Infochips, which employees over 170 engineers.

M A Baraiya, vice-president, Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd (CPL), considered the HR department as very vulnerable but HR as one of the biggest assets of a company.

He said employees continue to work with a company so long they feel proud and identify themselves with the firm, find opportunity for growth and get recognisation.