Arresting Attrition -Learning From BPOs

In a market where demand for talent far outstrips supply, the organizations continuously face the task of keeping the talent from being snared away by other employers. Over the last few years as India became the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) capital of the world, a new breed of employees started to step into the office cubicle. They were the millennials. With their arrival a silent revolution was happening in the offices of people who had to manage these young employees with school degrees, ready to earn a few bucks to supplement their pocket money dramatically. These employees were initially not treated any differently than employees of another industry and vintage. The same command and control model that was in place was put to manage the young and the restless. Yet this was a different business model which clearly depended far more tangibly on “keeping the seats warm” because each seat translated into revenue. Attrition appeared on HR Managers’ scorecards. Each time a trained employee left, the impact showed up on the weekly bank statement of the corporation. Businesses were still learning.

In the next phase, the business model stabilized, competitors emerged and thus started the exodus of employees. The BPO industry also grew its own brand of Human Resources professionals. Staffing Managers were rebranded as Talent Acquisition managers. Talent was to be treated like a supply chain, they said. It was not uncommon to hire hundreds of people every week. The employee was king again. The media started doing stories about these young professionals who kept hours and accents like that of the client countries they supported. The frenetic pace led to burnouts and after a brief respite attrition again showed up as the single biggest challenge for all.

In stage three of the industry the focus shifted towards the keeping the employees engaged. It was not about hiring, it was about getting the employee engaged. Corporate honchos went crazy. People competed with wilder and wilder ideas to distract employees who had attention spans shorter than a wailing baby on an aeroplane. This is where we stopped thinking. As some Call Centers faced attrition as high as 110% in a year, there were more and more short term solutions. Instead of questioning the fundamentals, more short term fixes came up. From weekend beer bashes to pizza parties to dress as you please themes, all that was infantile was now possible to do in the office cubicle. But attrition was a beast that could eat all this and more and never burp.

Longevity in an organization is about doing everything that careers are about. It is about paying competitively, but the best and brightest people rarely stay or leave because of money. A move to another organization has a bigger paycheck as a by-product. Money is never the cause for losing high performing stars. Learning new skills, growing as a person and as a professional are all what helps to build great careers. Short term fixes such as great office parties, stunning cafe, gym, chocolates for your pet cat and the like will arrest attrition in the short term. Think long term and you will have to think of careers. Attractive career options are a good starting point. A great assignment that balances what the employee can contribute and simultaneously learn from, will draw in the stars. Once the employee has started on the first assignment the manager needs to start identifying a clearly agreed career path that builds for future roles through job rotation, projects, short term assignments etc. Finally retaining the employees who have been nurtured have to be retained thru reward and recognition. All this is hard work. For the manager and the HR function. This intense career planning approach cannot be done for everyone. This is however a great place to begin to retain your high potential employees or the top 10% performers. To address attrition in the middle of the bell curve we have to start trickling this process down even to those among the high performers – even those with limited potential if we want to retain them.

In summary, if you want to manage attrition, start by looking at the Performance Management system of your organization. Is every manager adequately trained to give candid feedback and also to coach the players in the team? After all free pizza cannot be the substitute for having a great career coach at work.