An emotional issue
I was watching a TV debate on the subject and while the discussion was unremarkable in its originality, huge emotional outbursts from participants represented a corporate diwali. One could only feel sorry for the TV anchor who, after many tries, managed to close the discussion, no doubt breathing a heavy sigh of relief. The entire episode is very representative of the debate on this issue.
On one hand you have the unions with catchy phrases like “cyber coolies”, “12 hour workdays” and making out as though the hapless BPO worker is repressed, exploited, underpaid, unhappy, badly supervised and will forever remain this way unless they are able to step in and take charge. One can hardly blame them. With nothing to lose, they are faced with a dream situation – one from which they can never come out worse off than they are.
On the other hand, you have NASSCOM and BPO companies who are indignant that their huge investment in building world class infrastructure, world class HR practices, world class training etc is being completely cast aside for claims of employee exploitation. Most BPOs believe that this is totally unfair and are most vocal about their protestations.
The reality
Truth of the matter is that most IT and BPO companies do represent best practices in people management – not just in India but globally. They have invested huge amounts of money, time and resource in hiring, training, motivating and developing their employees and for anyone to pick this as a point of criticism of the industry reflects more on the critic than on the industry.
However, it is also true that not every company does it equally well and not every company wins the best employer awards. That every company has good managers and bad, just as every company has good employees as well as bad.
If you want to look for examples, there are enough of them in this industry to pretty much any support point of view you hold. You will find extraordinarily long working hours but you will also find adrenaline pumping exhilaration at the end of a successfully completed project. You will find people complaining about monotony of work but you will also find a huge premium on creativity and enterprise. You will find callous managers who don’t care about people but you will also find heart-warming stories of inspirational leadership. You will find tales of delivering under extreme conditions but you will also find the unmistakable shiny eyed pride in front of a delighted customer. This is the ground reality of the new knowledge industry of our country and while not everything is right with it, there is more that is good than has ever been in any single economic sector of India.
The knowledge workers
Like it or not, India is emerging at the leading edge of the knowledge industry in a way that the world has not yet seen. We will all need to understand this in order to create the right regulatory and legislative framework for the industry. The issue is not unionization per se but more that you cannot apply old rules to a model that you do not understand and which has not existed before.
Just look at the knowledge worker of today:
• The BPO employee is very mobile and highly empowered – this simple fact is very well understood by the best IT and BPO companies of today, which is why they have invested so much in people management practices. Ask any company – it is harder for a company to find right people than it is for employees to find jobs.Some BPO companies believe that the advent of unions will actually help them control high attrition. I agree that attrition is a problem but I also believe that forcing people to do something that they are not naturally inclined towards is absolutely the wrong answer. A headache requires an aspirin, not
• The BPO employee wants growth and development – the average BPO worker is ambitious and is constantly asking what is the company doing to develop him. He wants to be placed in more and more challenging situations, which will grow and stretch him. To me there are not too many industries that offer this type of growth opportunity.
The best thing you can do for an ambitious person is to place him in a meritocracy, not create bureaucracy that would force high performers into a seniority based queue for growth.
• A successful BPO employee is the best of his kind in the world – a BPO worker has consistently delivered world class quality to a global customer and been held to work standards that are the highest in the world. This person is on an emotional and professional high, created by solid achievement. The challenge is to keep this individual motivated and focused rather than protection of his employment rights.
Add all these things up and you have a group of people, or rather a whole industry, where the balance of power does not lie with company but with the individual. This is an empowered employee and light years away from the exploited workers who could only get a fair deal through collective representation. The knowledge worker of today is very much in control of his own future – its probably some BPO companies who could do with help in managing this new world employee !
A new world
So there you have it – like it or not, we are in a new world; setting standards for the rest. Old world institutions (like trade unions) will have to evolve to find relevance in the new world. Is it conceivable that they might – yes, of course. But it will take more creativity and innovation than one has seen so far. Mere rhetoric will not do.
Finally, one has to wonder at this – India is presented with an opportunity of a lifetime – to build a 10 – 15 million employee BPO business – 20-30 times the size of the IT industry. The real question is that is this the best use of our public energy? Is unionization and collective representation the biggest need of the BPO industry?
One cannot but help wonder at what the impact would be if the same debate, focus and energy were applied to public infrastructure, education, transportation issues that face BPO, lack of which can do much so much more damage to this fledgling industry than absence of unions.
This article appeared in Economic Times; Nov 17. 2005 under the title: Exploited? No, empowered
