A former Zappos manager explains how her job changed after the company got rid of bosses

Zappos has spent almost a year fully operating under Holacracy, a unique self-management system that gets rid of traditional manager roles and job titles.

Last March, the online retailer's CEO Tony Hsieh told employees that they could either embrace self-management or leave with a severance package. He'd begun implementing the system two years before but a couple hundred employees had yet to switch over, and he felt it was time to "rip the Band-Aid off." Ultimately 260 people, or 18% of the company, decided to take the offer and quit.

The move created tension and confusion but also helped identify the true believers, the employees who would help Hsieh realize his vision of a faster-paced, more innovative Zappos.

One of those employees, Danielle Kelly, had to figure out how to be successful as a manager in a company that no longer believed in traditional management. The transition was difficult and sometimes frustrating, but ultimately it changed her view of how companies and workers should function.

Kelly joined Zappos in 2012 as a customer service representative, and within a couple years she was managing the call center's operations. It was during this time, in early 2014, that Holacracy made its way to her team.

When a team converts to Holacracy, members lose their titles and jobs are distilled into "roles," which comprise a "circle" that serves a particular function. For example, the Marketing circle may contain the role of Copy Writer.

If it makes sense given the context, the team's former manager becomes its "lead link." But instead of managing specific people, lead links manage the roles in their circle, setting goals and seeing that they are achieved without demanding that they be accomplished in a particular way. Each employee may take on multiple roles.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Kelly was one of the former managers who became a lead link. As is the norm, Kelly and her team spent weeks figuring out how to restructure their jobs and learn Holacracy's lingo and protocols.

"It took a lot of time [away] from your normal job at first," she told Business Insider, and she sometimes felt like she was participating in an experiment that was leading nowhere. "You don't see the benefits when you're in the chaos of trying to make it work."

But a few months in she hit a turning point, and she soon became a convert to Holacracy.

In Zappos' 2014 fourth-quarter All-Hands Meeting, Hsieh announced that he was brainstorming ways to introduce flexible scheduling to the call center. Kelly was in charge of logging call center employees' hours and was intrigued by the idea of letting them create their own schedules, as long as they fit all their work in.

Richard Feloni/Business Insider

Zappos prides itself on exceptional customer service employees.

She met with Hsieh to discuss his thoughts on the matter and decided to start a new circle, called Open Market, dedicated to creating a tool that would allow this proposed scheduling system to function. She connected with Zappos Labs in San Francisco, and the resulting software is still used by all call center employees.

Kelly remembers the day Hsieh made the company-wide severance offer as being simultaneously exciting, confusing, and scary.

"Who were we going to lose? Where are they going to go?" she remembered thinking. After taking time to calm down, she decided that she enjoyed her work and wanted to stay.

And although that period was stressful for everyone at the company, Kelly found another opportunity to use Holacracy to create something. As the lead link of the Teal Kit circle, which is dedicated to creating self-management tools, she led the push to create the Role Marketplace, a tool that allows employees to see all of the unfilled roles in a particular circle, a feature that was especially useful after a couple hundred employees left in the span of a month.

The transition may have been emotionally turbulent and a steep learning curb, but Kelly has no desire to go back to the old way of doing things.

"I don't know what it would be like to work at a normal, structured company anymore," she said. "It seems like you wouldn't have the same empowerment and understanding of your own work and your own purpose without having all of these things in place that make it easy."

Source: http://www.businessinsider.in/

Why most of time Relationship between Consultant & Company HR doesn’t last more than 6 Months?

Gap from Company HR?

1. Consultants are deprived of fresh mandates.

You haven’t made Group Email address Book or forget to add some consultant on that group and your consultant realize opening in your company however he is not informed. To ensure this please don’t forget to update your Group Email address & inform consultants to confirm if they will have time to work on this position.

2. You don’t share feedback of interviewed candidates.

Your consultants keeps on sending you mail about their lineup however they never get feedback on who got selected and who got rejected and why. Sharing rejection reason is more important for them as if you have to groom them you need to tell them where they are missing.

3. You don’t pick calls of your consultant.

You are so busy in meetings and on your work that you forget to call the consultant who is working on your positions. You have told them that you will call back however knowing the interviewer or shortlisting will not happen in next few day you opt to disconnect consultant calls. To ensure you don’t do these, inform consultants in advance about best time to call you & solve their some quires on email/phone timely.

4. Delayed vendor Bills.

Your consultant has done his job however his bill is stuck for payment may be due to signing authority not available, you have exceeded your hiring budget, your finance team is having cash crunch & have set a diffident priority for your vendor payments or you have misplaced the bill in your papers. – Reactiveness, Transparency & Ownership is the Key here to ensure you keep your vendors happy.

5. No Response on the CV shared.

You have received many resumes from your consultants for the position which you floated recently, however person responsible is not available for shortlisting or position JD/Location/Level might change. Inform your consultants why are you not replying and when they should expect revert from you.  

Gap from Recruitment Consultant?

1. You share Junk CV without matching JD. 

As you work on multiple positions similarly Co HR has multiple tasks like multiple vendors, reviews, presentation, MIS, Interviews, Coordination & the list can go really long. You are judged with the quality of work which you do and if HR gets resumes which are not properly read & shortlisted by you as per JD, it creates a negative perception about your consultancy.

Always try to understand JD & interviewer perspective in-depth before you speak to prospective candidates so that your filtration is well and your candidates gets rejected only based on organizational fitment aspect only.

2. You don’t discuss your priority.

As you have read “customer first” and “Never Say No” Jargons so you didn’t inform Co HR that you have a family function or your team has planned a trip or you have given prior commitment to some other client to work on their position.

It is advisable you consider yourself as an extended arm of Co HR and update them about your situation clearly instead of giving a wrong commitment as based on your commitment Co HR will be giving commitments to their internal customers.

3. You work in unorganized manner.

As you are working on multiple positions so you have lineup candidates but have not mailed Co HR about interview schedule of few candidates interview were postponed however you forget to inform them. & HR discovers your lineup when candidate is at their reception.

Suggest you divide your day between BD, Sourcing, and Follow-up & MIS and finish pending task on planned time slots itself as one client lost is equal to 15 Pipeline BD cases.

4. Negative feedback about Your Consultancy.

Candidates lined up through you don’t give a positive feedback about their interaction with your recruiters or Recruiters fail to give proper response on some candidate/lineups/mandate.

These situations are dangerous as you not only loose client but also it affect the brand value of your clients also. It is advisable you audit call of your team to check how they are pitching the job/company and correct where ever required before a candidate or client observe. 

please feel free to write your comments / share your suggestions on roshankrawat@gmail.lcom

How to create a successful student referral Program in a Institute?

Why student referral program fail?

·         1. Institute authorities are not able to establish continues communication with students.

·         2. No Recall mechanism is created to keep the Drive on.

·         3. Institutions do not recognize efforts of admission team while driving student referral.

·         4. Student who refers admissions do not get their dues.

·         5. Referral scheme Remain as undercover Project instead of a well marketed activity.

·         6. Too Many terms and conditions make Referral Incentive looks far to achievable.

Elements of an Successful Student Referral Program?

1. Communication

2. Positioning

3. Reward

4. Recognition

5. Feedback

6. Follow-up

Element No. 1 - Communication

1.    Ensure Communication happens from Top to Bottom.

2.    Referral Scheme should be communicated through all tools i.e Group Announcement, Email, Posters, Internet, and One O One Sessions.

3.    Device a separate communication Plan for Fresh admissions, First Year, Final Year and Alumni students.

 Element No. 2 - Positioning

1.    Referral Scheme should bring a sense of ownership among students.

2.    Special incentive on referring Scholars as admission.

3.    Classification of Student’s Parents based on their Priority and involving them through testimonial, Reason for selecting institute.

Element No. 3 - Reward 

1.    Referral reward to be designed as a attractive tool i.e much above of a fee discounting or money making scheme.

2.    Referral Scheme to be designed as a extended support by institution to supports student’s parent financially.

3.    Reward those who are able to generate walk-in for admission form, Counseling also. 

Element No. 4 - Recognition

1.    Students who contribute marginal or marginally better are not recognized publicly by defining authorities.

2.    Recognition of Contribution is limited to class and only on Non serious Platforms. 

3.    Students get recognized after several follow-ups by referee resulting in lack of motivation.

Element No. 5 - Feedback

1.    Referred Students who attend counseling or pick admission forms are not followed up properly due to which interested students do not get complete required information.

2.    Updates on Referral Status is generally Unstructured and remain ineffective due to which Referrer students are not updated on the development with Referred Student and gradually loose the interest.

3.    There is no score card system for referral program due to which many students who could ignite due to Pear Pressure doesn't get enough kicks to participate.

Element No. 6 – Follow up

1.    No commitment is taken from every student about Referral Count to be given due to which complete referral program revolves around limited targeted audience.

2.    Face to Face meeting with students who promise to Refer however didn’t referred are not done often.

3.    Ownership with Subject Faculty remains least due to which there is no serious follow-up is sensed. 

In case of any clarification/discussion please feel free to reach me.

Is your Recruitment Process Positive?

“I don’t understand it. They told me that they were just looking now and that they would not make a decision for at least another three months. Why would you have me make this effort? If I find the role I am looking for, do they honestly think I will stick around for their call? The nerve of them.”

As I heard that, I said that yes, it does make sense. But I also know that we all have done informational interviews from time to time, but three months out is totally different. I don’t know what type interview that I would classify that as.

But this I do know: if a candidate has a bad experience applying for a job, that can play a critical role if your company decides to offer that candidate a position. Your organization is then behind the 8-ball from the start, so if the candidate takes the position, they are probably coming in not fully engaged and already skeptical.

Recruiting: it’s sort of like dating

I have always looked at recruiting as dating, in the old sense of the word. You both put your best foot forward during the courtship. You both display excellent manners until one of you decide that it is, or is not, a match made in heaven. You would never be rude or unresponsive.

And in the end if it does not work out, then you have that conversation and move on. That’s the way that I have always approached recruiting, too — no bad blood and walk away as friends, because in life, you never know how or when things will come around again.

I had lunch with a good friend the other day who had an interview years ago with a higher level person who basically just stuck her head in the door and spent a few minutes chatting before she passed her on. All the while, she was rude and rushed — and she was the hiring manager.

As fate would have it, this hiring manger lost her job not too long after that encounter. Then at an industry event a few months ago, my friend — now gainfully employed — was approached by this individual, and now, she was all ears with all the pleasantries, good to see yous, etc.

She even offered to do lunch or grab a cup of coffee together. It is amazing what unemployment will do to a person. Now the roles had shifted, and now this person wanted to network.

What you get from a bad candidate experience

Bad treatment during the courting process can cause a candidate to stop pursuing that company or turn down a job offer — that is, if he or she gets that far. But that’s not the end of it. Employers could lose out on more than just talent when the applicant experience is bad; the company’s reputation and business can suffer, too.

There was a time that organizations were in control of their culture. Not anymore; now you can go to a website like Glassdoor.com and learn everything that goes on inside a company, although I got into a discussion with a senior leader who told me that Glassdoor posts were all from losers and just sour grapes, so to speak.

But my point was that if you took the time to read through some of the statements posted at Glassdoor, and you find a common thread, whether it be about your recruiting process or statements about the company culture, you have a problem.

I always suggest that leaders should take a look at these kind of websites and see what your current, as well as your past, employees are saying about you. If you are trying to build a brand, repair a brand, or just want to maintain your brand status, you have to be aware of what is being said.

5 things to ask about your recruiting process

And on the other hand, your recruiting process must get corrected, so first you should take a quick look at how well your process works. You should:

•      Test the process: Have someone go to your website, and have them search and apply for a job. This is the usually one of the major complaints people have. Is the process easy or is it numerous clicks before they submit? That is why I am a big fan of “Apply with Linkedin,” because it can’t get any simpler than that.

•      Did you receive it? If you did receive the application, did your company acknowledge it? According to a CareerBuilder survey, a massive 44 percent of job applicants heard nothing after applying. That’s kind of like putting it in bottle and tossing it out to sea, then hoping and wondering that someone will come along and pick it up.

•      Kiss and tell: If you had a bad date, will you talk about it? There was a time that this would never happen. Today, not only will people share their every moment, but they surely will tell, text, and tweet to everyone they know about what happened. If they are mistreated, someone else will surely hear about it.

•      Are you intrigued at first sight? When you were initially contacted by the recruiter, did they sound excited and positive? Or, did they sound like this is a call they have to make to go through the hoops? There is a huge difference. That first contact should be exciting and provide a great “customer” experience. Have you ever called customer service and you had someone on the other end that was so enthusiastic that you felt it? If not try Amazon. It was the most amazing call I have ever had.

•      Keep ‘em warm: Every recruiter that has worked for me knows that we have to keep “potentials” engaged in the process. If you say you will call next week, dammit, call next week. If you say you have nothing to tell them, tell them that. Do not under any circumstances tell someone that you will follow up and then not follow through. Our word is our bond. If you agree to something, live up to it. Silence is not an option. My father would always tell me that the most important thing to remember is to always keep your word.

The bottom line is, you can’t mistreat people. You can say you are overworked, have 30 reqs open, working long hours, etc. Yes, you’re probably busy, but I still say that you can’t mistreat people. You must develop a process for following up and keeping them warm because it is important.

They also need to understand the business to recruit and select the right kind of people. “The fate of your business is held in the hands of the youngest recruit of the staff,” said Akio Morita, the well-known founder of Sony Corporation of Japan.

Yes, those are words to remember — and a good reason to remember why your recruiting process, and treating applicants well, is so critically important to the future of your organization.

 Extract from article of Ron Thomas of Buck Consultants.

Addition by Roshan Kumar : Industries operating through volume Hiring Mode cant sustain without a positive Recruitment Process as Word of Mouth and Employee Referral Program must yielding better contribution in Hiring  channels.

While HR focks do lot to ensure a candidate once Selected get the best treatment right from Issuing Offer Letter to On boarding tools to Budding during OJT and mentoring post 3 months of hiring. However their has been ZERO focus towards candidates who doesn't fit the bill however are part of same Talent Pool and Region.

With 35% Walk in to selection Ratio & 50% Selection to Joining Ratio it is utmost that we create a strong   Engagement model with first 65% Job seekers who were not selected due to any of the reason as they will be playing role of a Advisor while approaching similar talent Pool. This pool share their views on social media , open forum as well as in close circuits and can hit organisation Branding if not respected equally. 

Following are the Quick Actionable from this:

1. Thank you SMS to all Job Seekers.
2. Thank you email along with JD and Pre requisite of the Position which they applied for.
3. Reminder mailer about the cooling period for attending Interview.
4. Asking for Referral for open positions time to time.
5.Email flier of all future opening in the organisation.

Will be writing a detailed action plan for the same in forthcoming Article.

The Most Successful Leaders Do 15 Things Automatically, Every Day!!!

Leadership is learned behavior that becomes unconscious and automatic over time. 

1.  Make Others Feel Safe to Speak-Up

Many times leaders intimidate their colleagues with their title and power  when they walk into a room.   Successful leaders deflect attention away from themselves and encourage others to voice their opinions.  They are experts at making others feel safe to speak-up and confidently share their perspectives and points of view.   They use their executive presence to create an approachable environment.

2.  Make Decisions

Successful leaders are expert decision makers.    They either facilitate the dialogue to empower their colleagues to reach a strategic conclusion or they do it themselves.  They focus on “making things happen” at all times – decision making activities that sustain progress.   Successful leaders have mastered the art of politicking and thus don’t waste their time on issues that disrupt momentum.  They know how to make 30 decisions in 30 minutes.

3.  Communicate Expectations

Successful leaders are great communicators, and this is especially true when it comes to “performance expectations.”   In doing so, they remind their colleagues of the organization’s core values and mission statement – ensuring that their vision is properly translated and actionable objectives are properly executed.

I had a boss that managed the team by reminding us of the expectations that she had of the group.   She made it easy for the team to stay focused and on track.  The protocol she implemented – by clearly communicating expectations – increased performance and helped to identify those on the team that could not keep up with the standards she expected from us.

4.  Challenge People to Think

The most successful leaders understand their colleagues’ mindsets, capabilities and areas for improvement.  They use this knowledge/insight to challenge their teams to think and stretch them to reach for more.   These types of leaders excel in keeping their people on their toes, never allowing them to get comfortable and enabling them with the tools to grow.

If you are not thinking, you’re not learning new things.  If you’re not learning, you’re not growing – and over time becoming irrelevant in your work.

5.  Be Accountable to Others

Successful leaders allow their colleagues to manage them.  This doesn’t mean they are allowing others to control them – but rather becoming accountable to assure they are being proactive to their colleagues needs.

Beyond just mentoring and sponsoring selected employees, being accountable to others is a sign that your leader is focused more on your success than just their own.

6.  Lead by Example

Leading by example sounds easy, but few leaders are consistent with this one.   Successful leaders practice what they preach and are mindful of their actions. They know everyone is watching them and therefore are incredibly intuitive about detecting those who are observing their every move, waiting to detect a performance shortfall.

7.  Measure & Reward Performance

Great leaders always have a strong “pulse” on business performance and those people who are the performance champions. Not only do they review the numbers and measure performance ROI, they are active in acknowledging hard work and efforts (no matter the result).    Successful leaders never take consistent performers for granted and are mindful of rewarding them.

8.  Provide Continuous Feedback

Employees want their leaders to know that they are paying attention to them and they appreciate any insights along the way.  Successful leaders always provide feedback and they welcome reciprocal feedback by creating trustworthy relationships with their colleagues..   They understand the power of perspective and have learned the importance of feedback early on in their career as it has served them to enable workplace advancement

9.  Properly Allocate and Deploy Talent

Successful leaders know their talent pool and how to use it.  They are experts at activating the capabilities of their colleagues and knowing when to deploy their unique skill sets given the circumstances at hand. 

10.  Ask Questions, Seek Counsel

Successful leaders ask questions and seek counsel all the time.  From the outside, they appear to know-it-all – yet on the inside, they have a deep thirst for knowledge and constantly are on the look-out to learn new things because of their commitment to making themselves better through the wisdom of others.

11.  Problem Solve; Avoid Procrastination

Successful leaders tackle issues head-on and know how to discover the heart of the matter at hand.    They don’t procrastinate and thus become incredibly proficient at problem solving; they learn from and don’t avoid uncomfortable circumstances (they welcome them).

Getting ahead in life is about doing the things that most people don’t like doing.

12.  Positive Energy & Attitude

Successful leaders create a positive and inspiring workplace culture.  They know how to set the tone and bring an attitude that motivates their colleagues to take action.   As such, they are likeable, respected and strong willed.  They don’t allow failures to disrupt momentum.

13.  Be a Great Teacher
Many employees in the workplace will tell you that their leaders have stopped being teachers.   Successful leaders never stop teaching because they are so self-motivated to learn themselves.  They use teaching to keep their colleagues well-informed and knowledgeable through statistics, trends, and other newsworthy items.
14.  Invest in Relationships

Successful leaders don’t focus on protecting their domain – instead they expand it by investing in mutually beneficial relationships. Successful leaders associate themselves with “lifters and other leaders” – the types of people that can broaden their sphere of influence.  Not only for their own advancement, but that of others.

Leaders share the harvest of their success to help build momentum for those around them.

15.  Genuinely Enjoy Responsibilities

Successful leaders love being leaders – not for the sake of power but for the meaningful and purposeful impact they can create.   When you have reached a senior level of leadership – it’s about your ability to serve others and this can’t be accomplished unless you genuinely enjoy what you do.

In the end, successful leaders are able to sustain their success because these 15 things ultimately allow them to increase the value of their organization’s brand – while at the same time minimize the operating risk profile.   They serve as the enablers of talent, culture and results. Source: Article written by Glenn Llopis for forbes.com

Addition by Roshan Kumar Rawat:

I am a firm believer of leadership can be learnt. Short term leadership by force / illusion can be gained, however sustainable Leadership and followership happens only with volunteerism. 

The Leadership development cycle undergoes through a unusual and uncharted territories which evolve from aligning organization goal achievement process and interlocking team members capabilities & aspiration while making them part of success. This has to be supported by leading by action and quick decision making process and timely feedback.  

Recruitment/Retention Challenges in Domestic BPO

Domestic BPOs in India operate under interesting circumstances. There are a wide variety of them offering services related to customer service (inbound and outbound voice processes), financial and banking related back office transactions. The domestic IT-BPO industry is expected to reach US$ 1.8 Billion by 2013 (Source: Gartner). There is a hugh focus by many large companies in providing BPO services to the domestic market. Terms such as “Rural BPO” have now become the buzzword in India today.

While this growth is significant, it does bring about its own set of challenges. A key problem of a high growth industry is employee retention. One would assume that the talent retention problems afflicting BPO companies with domestic operations, would not be as severe as those with international operations. However, many companies in the domestic sector seem to have a far more severe problem with respect to this issue. Domestic call centers are the most affected with average tenures running at about 4 months in some companies. This obviously means that these companies will have challenges in providing the quality of service that their clients expect of them. In order to encourage talent retention, companies are trying a number of different techniques, many of which have already been used in international operations. The success rate, as reported by companies, has not been very encouraging. What then, is the root cause of such low retention?

In order to understand why domestic operations suffer from such situations, we need to understand the nature of the employees they hire. Lets take the example of a BPO company that provides call center services. The nature of work is related to standard customer service jobs including billing, address change, activation etc. Given below, is the profile of one of their employees, Gopal (name changed for obvious reasons).

Gopal’s Profile:

Gopal is 20 years old. He has studied till the 12th Standard, but never really took the 12th exam. His father was a mechanic at an automobile workshop and had an annual income of Rs. 200,000/- (Approx US$ 4500 per year). His father never finished high school. His mother is a home maker, but does odd jobs on and off, primarily as a domestic help. His mother studied till the 4th grade, after which she dropped out. Gopal has an older brother who does not hold a steady job. He is also a mechanic and has worked at various auto garages. He took up a job as a driver for a while, but went back to being a mechanic. Gopal’s younger sister, who is 19 years old, stopped going to school a few years ago. She works in a garment factory. His extended family consists of various cousins and uncles, all of whom are normally employed for about 8 to 10 months in a year. During this time, they tend to change 2 to 4 jobs. Most women either do not work, or hold jobs similar to that of Gopal’s mother. Gopal was smart and managed to learn English in an otherwise poor education system. While he would never qualify for a job in an international call center, his communication skills are sufficient for domestic centers. Gopal has held 3 jobs in the last 18 months, all of which were in domestic call centers. Each time he quit a company, he never informed his employers. Also, he quit on the day he received his salary. When asked a question as to why he quit, he could not pinpoint a specific reason, but cited many such as inconvenient work timings, stress at work, uncaring supervisor, better salary elsewhere etc.

There are many Gopals working in the BPO sector and they are the driving force behind the industry. But they also, unwittingly, place dampeners on their own growth and that of the industry through frequent job changes. What is it about the Gopals, that makes them behave the way they do? During the course of our assignments with clients in the Domestic BPO sector, we have had several realizations:

Reasons for Gopal’s Behaviour:

1. Emotional Maturity: Gopal’s background is such that he did not have the opportunity to emotionally develop himself to handle various situations. Both at school and at home, he probably never had the right role models, whose examples he could emulate. Therefore, his reactions to various situations he encounters, are not well thought through. For example, his inability to plan and prioritize would result in a perception that the work is very stressful. Also, poor social skills to manage various stakeholders at home and at work, would place addition pressure on him.

2. Peer group: Gopal’s peer group would probably have a similar profile to his own. Even as a group, their collective knowledge and maturity would still be limited, primarily due to lack of exposure earlier in life. They may not, for example, feel comfortable speaking their mind to the management. They will find it easier to stop coming to work. Its far easier for them to advice each other to quit companies rather than stay and resolve problems.

3. Job versus a career: This is, by far, one of the most important contributors to Gopal’s behavior. As of today, many domestic BPO companies are founded and run by professional managers whose background is quite different from that of Gopal. These managers are professional and understand the concept of building a career in a company over a longer period of time. However Gopal does not understand this concept. He has seen his brother, cousins and uncles view their own work as an independent series of “jobs”, rather than, as an integrated set using which one can build careers. To his father, who is a mechanic by profession, it did not really matter where he worked, because he will be doing the same type of work. There was no talk at home about career advancement, promotions etc. Given that this is the environment in which Gopal grew up, it is not surprising that he views his work as a “job” rather than as a “career” that can be assiduously built over time. Unfortunately, not all managers are able to recognize this because they have never been exposed to Gopal’s life. Therefore, they may continue trying retention techniques, that will not work on Gopal. What then, can be done, to retain Gopal in the company?

Solutions:

Solution 1: At OnTrac, we have helped domestic BPO companies address retention by creating a career simulation that new joiners will undergo as part of the onboarding process. This simulation lasts for a day, during which, participants need to make decisions for a hypothetical employe who faces a variety of realistic scenarios at the workplace. These could include an unsympathetic supervisor, high workload that lasts several days, frequent changing of shifts, working overtime, night shifts, temptations from friends to join other companies, calls from head hunters etc. Participants are divided into groups. Each group will need to make decisions based on the scenarios they receive. The decisions they make will determine the next scenario they receive. The decisions will also determine the career progress of the hypothetical employee. Finally, the instructor shows the right decisions that should have been made, to maximize career growth. The objective of this simulation, is to help participants:

a. Prepare for the situations they are likely to encounter in the workplace so that they can respond appropriately

b. Get them to understand the right decisions that they should take when they encounter these situations

c. Help them see the value of building a career and not look at their work as “just another job”

Further, we encourage our clients to conduct “mini” simulations every quarter to help employees remember the concepts of career building. This is to counter the recency effect, that afflicts most people, where they tend to remember events that took place in the recent past. Therefore, if employees have any reason to quit because of events in the recent past, it would be addressed by the simulation.

(The above is a generalization based on OnTrac’s consulting assignments with several clients in the domestic BPO sector. There are people with different profiles who exhibit other sets of behaviors)

Solution 2: Another solution, is for companies to de-skill tasks as much as possible. This provides two key benefits to companies. The first benefit deals with the expansion of the available workforce pool. Deskilling makes the work simpler and hence the number of people who can potentially do the job expands significantly. Therefore, the impact of attrition is reduced considerably. Also, the effect of wage inflation on the profitability can be brought under control. The second benefit is the potential to automate some of the operations post deskilling. When this occurs, it further reduces dependence upon high skilled workers, thereby reducing the impact of attrition. Deskilling, in general is somewhat harder to do because it involves re-engineering processes and will impact various stakeholders including customers. Also, it requires a higher degree of management. Therefore, it is an activity that needs to be well thought through.

Source: www.iamontrac.com

Addition by Roshan Kumar

I recently meet leaders of 2 Domestic BPO, one into finance KPO and other was into Telecom BPO, both of them shared a common Problem of Loss in revenue due to non availability of Manpower.

Interestingly there were few clear facts also. Fact 1 Domestic BPO is based at Tier II, III city and was paying minimum wages of a semi skilled person, which is a good amount for a fresher in his home town wherein Finance KPO is based in metro city but was paying higher as they were looking for people with some accounting knowledge and skills.  Fact 2 India is a country of villages with only 25% urban population. Literacy ratio is increasing YoY, metros are getting huge influx of migrants and migrates crib about lack of opportunity in small cities.

Both the Problem statement and current situation of huge availability of young unemployed manpower raise a flag i.e Are we doing enough to ensure there is manpower OFF THE TAP? (my Ex Boss Rajiv Khanna CEO FLY Mobile taught me this word)

Biggest Bank SBI hire Probationary officers with condition to be posted at rural town for first 2 yrs however those new hire prefer taking 2 yrs unpaid leave to get posted at big city.  B Schools are not able to tell their students that a MBA from C,D grade  institute will have to do Direct Sales like insurance, D-MAT. Parents from villages don’t understand why their kid get first job of 7-8K pm even they took education loan of 3L.

Just on/off visit to education point/campus is just not enough today because a students who have born watching SRK achieving his each goal in real life will always run for the same and would not like to start from low and won’t mind struggling/doing hard work in big cities. however if we are able to educate the society, sarpanch, Institute owners, small such platforms, and other opinion leaders that BPO employs 2.2mm+ people so job offers, increment, promotions are likely hear more and a person is set to grow in rural BPO more than in metro cities as BPO want to operate in low cost of operation which is possible only if they move away from metro. 


We must keep in mind their is already stiff competition in market of talent acquisition and rural talent get other options of similar paying jobs so just squeezing every opportunity or throwing seeds every where is not enough,  BPOs need to create a structured program wherein a fresher feels a assurance of job after training from the organization on the same time BPO can ensure there is a funnel flowing talent inside as a ongoing process, such talent development factory should meet the demand of next 2-3 QTRs always.