Greetings,
Appreciate your kind words. HR for ITES domain is different in its implementation and the way talents need to be managed. You would find similar guidelines for IT, but KPO/ITES domain experience a higher degree of volatility. Let us take a fine view of this sector.
Talent
The talent remains highly susceptible to market factors such as better pay or more benefits. Creating 'employability' holds the key. The employee life cycle is timed differently. They can be categorized in the following ways:
- Stop-gap arrangements: There will always be some talent who join this sector as a stop-gap arrangement. They are primarily students who work in this vertical as their first few jobs. Thereafter, they graduate into other sectors such as Banking, IT, and MBA education.
- Convenience: For a few, it's convenience that brings and keeps them in this sector. Talents such as working Moms, people who have been working in the marketing field for a long time and now can no longer work in the field, lowly paid yet highly skilled talent such as Teachers, market researchers, and others.
- Home runner: Finally, it's the talent who sees a future in this vertical. They may have worked in other service sectors such as marketing, teaching, media, hotel, defense, and retail. They are trained to an extent. This vertical suits their behavioral and professional pattern. Hence, they work efficiently in the operations and quality before they shift into training or other business development areas.
Policies for Talent Management
When you design a policy and draw your Employee handbook, please do keep this talent base in view. Primarily, policies differ in terms of cost implications. The cost-per-employee is lower compared to IT. Hence benefits are offered differently. The talent market remains volatile, so absconding cases increase business risks. This impacts how you manage your employees internally so that your talent pool allows you to leverage the billability. Suppose in IT you will have a project valuation and hire resources based on that. Whereas in ITES, you will have the process valuation and a minimum number of agents mentioned. But in practice, you will hire more employees exceeding the minimum number. Suppose your process valuation is $400 per agent. You would leverage and hire two trainees for Rs. 10,000 each, including incentives. This means your monthly pay would be around Rs. 7,000 for each. This covers your business risk. Even when one employee absconds, there is another one to run the process until you hire a new employee within the remaining cost.
In IT, this would not work this way. Every developer would be billed on the total project cost. Hence, when you manage your employee, you make them sign bonds/Training Agreement, which would cover your project cycles. The benefits and retirements are all planned as per the gross budget. The leaves are as per the state and central government guidelines but aligned to the client's calendar. An IT Firm will not work on Independence Day. But a BPO would. They would rather have a holiday on American Bank Holiday or Thanksgiving.
HR's Role
Here, your fundamental duty is to provide continuity to the business. You would have challenges from the talent base with a high rate of attrition, sudden absenteeism during high work volume, non-adherence to policies related to information sharing, etc. You need to focus on employee engagement not just by arranging events for the employees but creating meaningful employment for them. Make sure there are enough trainings that can ensure their employability once they move out of the company. The HR policies need to be followed with zero tolerance for any deviations. Keep a clear view of the employee life cycle and flag the early warning signs for attrition as efficiently as possible. You cannot stop people from leaving your company. You can only ensure that when they leave, there is a minimum impact on the business. Keep your talent pool ready. Hiring and training need to be super-efficient to ensure the fastest billability for every new hire. Background verification is another area you need to focus on, but it can be outsourced until you have the bandwidth to deliver it.
You would find every HR-related document in the CiteHR New Member's group. There are formats, forms, policies, agreements, budget plans, calendars, etc. There would be changes that you would be required to make depending upon your requirement. Blog about the bottlenecks that you face while designing them and allow us to contribute.
Regards, (Cite Contribution)