Thought Leadership Articles
Kenexa HR Thought Leadership™ articles are experience-driven pieces that discuss best practices in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space. These articles are written by skilled HR practitioners or technologists who initiate or provide new thinking on a specific component of HR. Kenexa HR Thought Leadership articles discuss strategies on new or existing HR topics and educate readers about future possibilities and considerations on those topics. The overall purpose of these thought leadership articles is to engage readers through original, innovative ideas that are supported by the knowledge and experience of the author.
Keeping Call Center Employees Happy: Human Capital Retention in BPOs
By Kyle Lundby, Ph.D. and Siddartha Parthasarathy, Kenexa and Brenda Kowske, Ph.D., Kenexa Research Institute
In India, call centers make up a key ingredient in the industry sector known as Business Process Outsourcing, or BPO. For many of India’s youth, call center positions are highly prized for their pay, given that a typical call center employee earns significantly higher income than the national per capita income. Career opportunities and pleasant working conditions also sweeten the deal. Current estimates put the number of call center employees around 350,000, a sizeable block of Indian human capital.
Recently, competition among firms for talented call center employees has noticeably increased. While there are many reasons for this, including the increase of BPOs in the marketplace driving up talent demand, it’s a hard job with potentially grueling hours; and some view it as a dead end. The bottom line is that organizations with BPO units in India will need to pay closer attention to selecting the best candidates and then retaining them over time.