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MUMBAI, June 15

FOR an industry with 40 per cent of its operational costs in people, a 25 per cent attrition rate is no small problem. The ITES industry - small but growing at 50 per cent yearly - is confronting its HR issues head-on. At the recent Nasscom ITES-BPO summit, HR managers said that though the ITES industry has a pool of millions of graduates to choose from, it has a high turnover rate, it is facing a shortage of skilled labour and is looking at ways to make itself an attractive employer.

With an average employee age of 23, the still-to-mature industry has equally inexperienced youngsters for staff. Considering the night shifts they face and the impatient or angry customers they interact with, employees have high stress levels, one in two smoke too much and many of them quit the industry due to stress, according to Mr Aadesh Goyal, Executive Vice-President and GM, Hughes BPO services. "They do not consider it a career option."

"To grow the industry to a million plus jobs, over the next few years, we have to accept the problems we face," says Mr Goyal. Yet, these are not unique to India, says Mr Martin Conboy, President, Callcentres.net, a Sydney-based industry body. Call centres in the West too face similar problems.

Admittedly, the average age of the employee is higher in the West, people consider it as a career option and are taught workplace stress management. "Simply because they are older, call centre employees in the West will have acquired the life-skills to deal with different types of customers," Mr Conboy says.

"A typical Indian call centre agent is just out of college and, with a less than 4 per cent focus during training on stress management in the sector today, is ill-equipped to handle an irate, or downright rude customer on the phone," asserts Mr Conboy.

There are also the physiological problems of night-time work, irregular eating habits and the effect of the timings on their personal life, says Mr Goyal. Hiring should result in only `stress hardy' candidates being chosen for the job, according to Mr Conboy. "Psychometric profiling of candidates will soon be adopted in the industry," he says. There are literally hundreds of psychometric profiling techniques in the market, it is advisable for the industry to evaluate their suitability before accepting them, adds Mr Suren Singh Rasaily, Sr VP NIIT Ltd and head, Planetworkz, and heading Nasscom's ITES-BPO HR initiative.

The industry is also facing the admittedly controversial issue of poaching employees, agree HR managers. "That is only to be expected in an `overheated industry'," says Mr Prakash Gurbaxani, CEO, TransWorks Information services. Not only does the average HR manager need 500 people suddenly, he needs them up-to-speed and delivering immediately. This can only happen if you hire from the existing pool of call centre employees. While there is the example of Daksh eServices and Wipro Spectramind agreeing not to hire from each other, not only are such pacts impossible on an industry scale, but also undesirable, agree HR managers.

Measures such as training graduates and college students in language and communication skills have been suggested by Nasscom and by several Governments keen on attracting call-centres to their States. These are too `long term' in nature, says Mr Gurbaxani. "Someone in the call centre industry today needs to worry about what he is doing tomorrow. One way could be for call centres to move to B cities such as Indore, Ahmedabad, Mysore or Coimbatore to reduce costs and attrition as well as to tap their most valuable and expensive resource - people.

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