Indian HR

Here are a variety of no-cost things you can do to begin building your employment brand.

Benchmark and learn all you can internally from successful product and employment brands. Do the same externally (especially look at Cisco, GE, HP and IBM).
Assess your organization's current management practices, benefits, culture, etc., to identify what you "have to sell" and what you need to improve.
Do a quick survey or assessment of your current employment "image" among employees, applicants and general public using surveys and focus groups.
Calculate the potential ROI for branding and sell the idea to management.
Develop a catchy slogan that highlights your very best "great place to work" feature(s).
Develop a people-program inventory that lists each of your organization's unique human resource or people programs. This list should be used as ammunition to highlight your best practices in marketing pieces and in media articles.
Identify company products and programs that involve innovation, help save lives or protect the environment. Use these stories and examples in recruiting materials.
Rename some of your successful people programs with "catchy" names that grab people's attention.
Do a side-by-side comparison of your benefits and people pro-grams against those of your talent competitors. Identify areas where you are clearly superior.
Identify and assess your competitors' employment "brand" against which you'll be competing. Develop a branding strategy that high-lights the differences between you and your competitor.
Compose one or two-paragraph profiles of individual employee "success stories" for use in articles and on the Web site.
Work with the CEO's office to get top executives to mention your organization's great people practices both in their internal and external communications. When necessary, write that section of the speech for the CEO.
Apply for listing in the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.
Work with the PR department to identify public events that the company is sponsoring. Send managers and recruiters to talk about the company's great people practices. The recruiting department should also add a few of the marketing staff to its advisory team to offer suggestions and to coach recruiters on the latest marketing tools and strategies.
Work with the sales department to identify public sales events and trade shows where materials highlighting your great people practices can be displayed.
Quantify the participation and usage of your work-life balance and other similar high-profile people programs. Quantifying the usage sends a more powerful message than merely saying "we have a program."
Rank potential media and tools to convey branding efforts (based on what your target audience reads or attends), and then select the initial media and methods to convey the branding message.
Review articles that mention different companies' people pro-grams. Then develop a list of the criteria used by local publications when they select a company or people program to feature. Utilize these criteria for selecting which program stories you should high-light in your branding effort. In addition, build relationships with local publications and their reporters. Volunteer to act as sources, and encourage them to write stories on your great people and management practices.
Identify the target market (the type of candidate you are trying to attract) for your branding efforts. Develop a target profile for them (who they are; where to find them; what they read; events they go to; etc.).
Get key managers to write articles and give talks at industry association meetings. Be sure they include great people practices in their materials.
Get managers to give talks at community meetings and at the local Chamber of Commerce that highlight your people practices.
Invite family and friends of employees on site to see "what it is like to work here" and the importance of employees' work so that they will help spread the word on what a great place your organization is to work.
Offer benchmarking sessions on your great "people practices" to teach your customers and suppliers how you do great people man-agement in an attempt to get the attendees to spread the word.
Profile key employee success stories and best management practices on your corporate career web site. Periodically highlight your great people practices in internal publications to remind employees of the great things you do.
Cosponsor "career workshops" in schools to build your im-age early.
Ask the union, if you have one, to help spread the word about what a great place to work you are.
Encourage local college professors to visit and write "case studies" and articles about the company's people practices.
Participate in industry-wide benchmarking studies to help build your visibility.
Have human resource leaders speak at public human resource seminars and write articles for human resource trade publications about your people practices. Have them join the boards of local nonprofit groups and associations to help spread the word.
Include marketing and branding experience in the criteria you use to hire additional recruiters.
Create a process to measure and evaluate the program's effective-ness, monitor its progress, and improve it.

LOW-COST BRANDING TOOLS
If you have a little money to spend on human resources branding, here are some low-cost things to do.
Re-energize your existing employee referral program and set "targets" for referrals from each department. Include participation as part of the normal performance appraisal process. Provide employees with cards listing the top ten reasons why it's great to work for your company.
Encourage employees to put decals, license plate holders, etc., on their vehicles to broadcast their loyalty. Sell or distribute employment-branded items (hats, T-shirts, pens, etc.) that depict work at your organization.
Participate in community clean-up programs; get your organization named on "clean-up" highway signs.
Develop an alumni club for ex-employees and retirees. Involve these former employees in the process of spreading the word.
Distribute logo book bags, T-shirts, and other similar items to children; sponsor school events.
Work with the advertising department to place ads that occasion-ally highlight your great people and management practices as well as your products.
Train and reward managers for excellent people-management performance.
Conduct surveys of college students, business writers, academics, executive recruiters, and influential business leaders as well as your employees to assess your perceived strengths, weaknesses, corporate culture and image.
Revise recruiting practices to include "wow" elements to make a lasting impression. Continually review your recruitment strategy and team capabilities.
Have the CEO or human resource vice president write a book about the organization's people-management practices.

POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING A SOUGHT-AFTER EMPLOYER
There is also a downside to being a choice employer--a possible downside to your branding efforts. Some of the possible problems include:
Executive recruiters often target your organization's management and its employees.
The strength of the corporate culture makes changing it (as well as many operational changes) difficult.
Because of their "fame," the organization's employees have a tendency to become overconfident.
Performance measurement and willingness to accept criticism often diminish due to this overconfidence.
The company's image must be defended continually. Minor errors can be blown out of proportion by the press.
Pay levels (and thus costs of production) can be high due to the high cost of maintaining a world-class workforce.
New recruits may have unrealistic expectations based on image that can turn into disillusionment if everyday reality does not match.
Being an employer with a great reputation helps an organization grow, and this increase in size makes maintaining the culture and the "choice employer" status difficult over time.

1. Brand equity: People still consider BPO to be 'low brow'?, thus
making it difficult to attract the best talent.

2. Standard pre-job training: Again, due to the wide variety of
the jobs, lack of general clarity on skill sets, etc, there is no standard curriculum, which could be designed and followed.

3. Benchmarks: There are hardly any benchmarks for compensation and benefits, performance or HR policies. Everyone is charting their own course.

4. Customer-companies tend to demand better results from outsourcing partners than what they could actually expect from their own departments. When the job is being done 10,000 miles away, demands on parameters such as quality, turn around timeliness, information security, business continuity and disaster recovery, etc, are far higher than at home. So, how to be more efficient than the original?

5. Lack of focused training and certifications

Given this background, the recruiting and compensation challenges of HR departments are only understandable.

Key To success

The key to success in ramping up talent in a BPO environment is a rapid training module. The training component has to be seen as an important sub-process, requiring constant re-engineering.

HR Practices being practiced by some of the Leading BPO:

WNS:

In a bid to retain its experienced professionals in the midst of growing demand for trained manpower, business process outsourcing (BPO) firm WNS Global Services (P) Ltd has opted for a competency-based framework for selection and promotion of its key personnel.

The idea is to fill up a majority of the leadership positions from within WNS instead of importing talent from outside. It is also an attempt
to keep out bias in the system and increase transparency. The program is performance-driven and puts in place a scientific process, which, matches employees’ knowledge, skills and attributes with the role requirements.

WNS is among the first companies in the BPO space to opt for a competency-based framework and integrate it with HR practices.

Apart from compensation, developing managerial talent from within the organization is considered to be an important retention tool. Skills of the middle management level would be critical as operations are ramped up. Identifying talent and building capabilities to enable them to handle larger teams and develop new skill-sets that drive business dealing capability is needed.

HSS (Skills and Behavioral Training)

HSS' work culture and value system are the key foundation and enablers in creating a unique workplace. There is a strong emphasis on Skill and Behavioral Training, Leadership Development and e Learning. Its practices are benchmarked by the entire industry. HSS is a winner of several industry awards for its HR practices.

EXL Services (the wholly owned subsidiary of Exlservice Inc., a Delaware Corporation)

In the words of Mr. Deepak Dhawan (VP-HR)

1) An offer of housing to all employees. (As housing will be offered alongside, our employees will no longer have to go through the trouble of searching for paying guest or rented accommodation)

2) Increased Out station Recruitment

3) At EXL people make it to middle management level with their compensation going up by five times in three years

4) At induction level and later, we make it a point to provide profiles of people who have grown with the company through its merit-based structure

The front lines of a corporate call center are often charged with emotion, and companies need to account for that when hiring and training workers to take on this critical role in customer contact, according to speakers at a recent Call Center Industry Forum sponsored by Wharton's Financial Institutions Center.

"There is a growing need for workers who have to deal constantly with the public to manage emotions - and this is especially true for those on the phones," said Steffanie Wilk , a Wharton management professor who has done extensive research on call centers.

Nancy Rothbard , professor of management at Wharton, presented the results of research on workers' mood, performance and burnout conducted by her and Wilk at a large property and casualty insurer. During three weeks in May 2003, a group of 40 call center workers received computer prompts to answer four
short questionnaires at the beginning and end of the day, and another two at random times, to gauge their mood. In addition, the researchers taped the workers during the period and are coding 6,000 calls to develop an objective measure of the emotions evoked during those calls. Each worker's overall positive or negative personal nature was also evaluated and controlled for in the research.

"When we think about call center workers, one of the biggest challenges is remaining resilient to the anger and hostility that can come their way. That's the negative side," said Rothbard. "But what about the positive side? If a client is pleasant and cheerful, does that infuse you with energy in the way I found it does when a positive mood from home spills over?"

The BMW Hostage Rothbard recalled one conversation in which a caller accused the call center worker of keeping her BMW hostage at a body shop for three weeks. "What we really heard in the calls we listened to, and in focus groups, was that there is a wide variety of emotions, from very negative hostile ones to very sad ones." In addition, there were "incredibly difficult calls" coming in that referred to events surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, said Rothbard.

Earlier work, she added, shows an emotional spillover between home and work for employees. She suggested that problems at home do not necessarily lead to problems at work. "I found there was more evidence of enrichment - where positive emotions from home spilled over and caused people to be more engaged with work. Negative emotions also spilled over and caused people to be more engaged with their work.
Employers fear spillover from home will cause workers to be disengaged, but people try to escape from a negative experience by throwing themselves into another role."

Preliminary results of the insurance company call center research show that workers' moods coming into the job surface throughout the day,Rothbard said. If workers arrived in a positive mood, they were likely to stay that way and the same held true if they arrived in a bad mood.
As for the contagion effect of customers, Rothbard said there is spillover, but more for positive interactions than for negative ones.
"My guess is [employees] are skilled and able to segment that away from themselves, but they let in the positive if the customer is cheerful and happy . Perhaps it's a coping mechanism."

In focus groups, according to Wilk, call center workers routinely say the hardest part of their job is that they know how to help the customer, but do not have the authority to take action, such as waiving a late fee. This forces the customer to get angry enough that he or she asks to speak to a person who has authority." "It's incredibly frustrating" for the initial call center representative.

Wilk said call center processes and operations should be better designed to anticipate callers' needs and make sure those calls are routed most effectively to people who can actually help the customer. "In the command and control model, in essence you set it up so that the customer has to get angry or upset with you before his or her issues can get resolved. You're signaling to the customer that talking loudly and screaming gets you what you want."

With the increasing use of foreign call centers, U.S. workers can feel even greater pressure, which then leads to burnout, added Wilk. "Only a small percentage of these workers are in a union. With technology, a flick of a switch can move their jobs away. Workers say that they are afraid to complain" for fear of being let go.

Hiring and Training
According to Daniel J. Ostgaard, president of Human Resource Advisors in Minneapolis and a consultant to several large call centers, it is important for companies to stick to fundamentals when hiring and managing call center employees.

First, he said, companies must understand their own organization in order to select the right person for the job. "If we focus on understanding the job and build a selection system, we want to start with the biggest impact and build on that," said Ostgaard. For example,companies should consider whether the job opening is team-based or individually oriented when drafting selection criteria. "I think it makes a great deal of difference what product people are supporting," he said.

Ostgaard also questioned the practice of moving customer service representatives into sales positions in which people who are courteous and friendly may be uncomfortable selling. In addition, he said an overemphasis on courtesy can be damaging. "The danger is you have people with great courtesy and presentation on the phone and they give bad information all the time." Ostgaard urged employers to create ways to measure and evaluate their call center hiring. Call center managers, he said, focus on many metrics. "Why don't we do [the same thing] for the selection process? We probably know the manager that consistently makes the best quality hires. We should, and we can, measure that."

Ostgaard also cautioned employers against falling for vendors who emphasize speedy analytical technology over fundamental selection assessment. "Vendors promote their product on instantaneous results and an easy-to-read and easy-to-interpret report. Great. Now I can make a bad decision faster and easier."

Culture Fits, and Misfits
Malcolm McCulloch, senior research consultant at LIMRA International in Hartford, Conn.- a non-profit research organization for the life insurance industry - suggested companies make a better effort to hire employees who will fit into the culture of their organization. Call centers, he said, typically experience a 30% annual turnover in employees. "It's very costly. Anything over 5% is pain and I've seen it where the mean is 17 days."

McCulloch defined what he calls "person-organization fit" as the match between an individual's values and preferences and the characteristics of the work organization. He used the example of a claim center where accuracy and attention to detail are important. An individual who avoids risk and accepts supervision is likely to feel satisfied and comfortable in the job and develop a commitment to the organization. "On the other hand, a misfit at the claim center may have an entrepreneurial spirit. They're not going to be happy campers. They won't commit to the organization and they will soon leave."

Companies should develop measures to test for organization fit in hiring new employees, he noted. "In the business world a lot of people assume they know fit and talk about fit, but they really don't put a lot of rigor around it. They use a lot of subjective techniques. They say, 'My gut [tells me],' or 'My sense is.'"

According to McCulloch, companies can use front-line managers to develop a set of "descriptors" defining the company's culture. For example, one descriptor might be the word "predictable" - defined as an environment in which representatives know what to expect day to day. In a research project, Limra used 54 descriptors to create profiles of 11 companies that were matched against 360 employee responses. The employees were grouped into seven categories assessing the level of cultural match. Of the employees who were an extreme mismatch, only 11% were still on the job a year later. Of those with a very strong match to the organization's culture, 81% were still at their jobs a year later. Of those in the middle of the spectrum, with a moderate match, 68% were on the job a year later.

"The moral of the tale is that in an applied sense the person-organization fit was a significant predictor of turnover," said
McCulloch.

Pros and Cons of Scripting
Once workers are selected for call center work, most are trained for their specific jobs, but they should also be given a larger sense of the organization, said Larry Hunter, professor of management, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hunter has researched the role of scripts in call center work and found some contradictions. While workers say using scripts improves their skills and makes it easier to do their jobs, they also react negatively to scripting and report that it leads to lower morale over time.

Describing research developed from 800 responses at a large telecommunications company, Hunter said scripts help employees interact with customers and improve product knowledge. Workers with more scripting agreed more strongly that scripts are restrictive and reported that the amount of scripting was not related to the perceived helpfulness of the scripts. Employees with longer time on the job also tended to like scripts less. "We see that scripting builds skills and managers have a reason to want them, but there is a downside,'" said Hunter. "More scripting is associated with lower job satisfaction,greater burnout and a higher intention to quit the job."

Hunter said companies should try to preserve the benefits of scripting, while protecting against the downside, by using two levels of training. The first level involves simple training in how and when to use the script. This is frequently done, but not always. In second-level training, workers are given a deeper understanding of why the script is being used and how it relates to efficiency and other goals of the organization, such as cross-selling. This kind of training is unusual for call center employees, said Hunter. "If you can do that, I suggest you will cut turnover and increase efficiency. Where people don't think scripts are going to reduce their autonomy, where they have the big picture . they are less likely to be burned out and less likely to quit."

The two-level approach to training could be used in many elements of call center work, not just scripting, he noted. "Helping people understand why they are doing these kinds of things is critical in helping them to survive what can be a really stressful environment."