Talent crunch forces BPOs to dilute tasks

HYDERABAD: The Indian BPO job may be getting onto a factorylike assembly line chore. Similar to automobile shop floors, where jobs are broken down into miniscule tasks and processes demarcated step by step, BPO companies in India are experimenting of breaking a complex activity into numerous simple chores, to be easily performed by even school passouts. The dilution of task difficulty is primarily seen as a solution to talent crunch and a way to check attrition and battle wage inflation. Although it is not yet mainstream, if scaled up, it will throw up an opportunity for rural India to become the backoffice for BPO According to Nasscom vice-president Ameet Nivsarkar, “These experiments are being piloted by some BPO firms and the results are encouraging. We have to see how this can be scaled up. Essentially, this could help the BPO industry spread to tier II and III towns where smaller tasks can be offshored.” The BPO industry in India is currently centred around six metro cities in India which account for over 90% of the operations. Offshoring within India would capitalise on the vast rural and school dropout population. Says rural back office vehicle GramIT chief integrator Verghese Thomas, “Destinations like Dhaka and Philippines are becoming attractive as lowcost centres. There are 30 million 12th pass people in rural India who could be part of the rural BPO revolution.”