Covid-19 impact: Talent hunt makes BPM services companies move to 'Bharat'

Pandemic forces companies to look at setting up centres in smaller towns

It’s not always that workplaces move closer to the workforce, especially when the latter is located in semi-urban or rural areas. But, thanks to the reverse migration seen during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, business process management (BPM) services companies are seeing reason to set up centres in smaller cities and towns.

In the past four-five months, majority of the workforce employed in diverse sectors in metros and large cities have moved back to their native places. There are chances that many of them won’t come back at all, owing to perception that cities are not safe during the times of pandemic. 

In the knowledge sector, where remote working is common, information technology (IT) services firms have largely adopted to the work-from-home (WFH) environment. But it has not been the same for the BPM companies, owing to several factors.

“I have told my team that we are not going to wait for the people to come (back) to us, and instead we will go to the places where the workforce is,” said Rajiv Ahuja, president of BPM services firm Startek. 

“Over the next 6-8 months, I am going to set up another three centres in semi-urban areas where the talent pool exists. This is because it will be easier for a person to come to work in a small city rather than a bigger city far away from home, post the pandemic,” Ahuja said.

The US-headquartered back office services provider has over a third of its global workforce of around 42,000 located in India. Of the 15-16 centres owned by the company, around nine operate in smaller cities such as Chhindwada, Vijayawada, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad.

The new centres, said Ahuja, would be of around 600 seaters each, and the company would prefer to set them up outside the places where it is already present.

Similarly, BPM services firm WNS is adopting a new delivery model with focus on getting access to talent from smaller cities by setting up satellite centres. 

The NYSE-listed firm is pioneering a ‘Hub-Edge-Spoke’ delivery model wherein its traditional brick-and-mortar offices will function as ‘hubs’ while work-from-home will be ‘edge’.

‘Spokes’ will be satellite offices with a capacity of 50-100 seaters each which the company is looking to set up mostly in lower-rung cities and towns. “WNS already has centres in cities such as Nasik and Vizag. Post Covid, the ability for us to grow business in these locations is going to increase dramatically,” said Keshav Murugesh, group chief executive, WNS.  

Another reason why BPM firms are looking at setting up shop in smaller cities is also the demand from clients. 

Majority of clients in the domestic market, especially from e-commerce, insurance and health care, are realising that the next phase of demand is going to come from rural India and smaller cities.

There are several BPM firms, which are already operating in tier-II and even semi-urban places in the country. 

While the earlier move was predominantly led by their corporate social responsibility (CSR), the current move is led by business and operational needs.

Other than getting access to talent, the cost of running these centres are also lower, owing to lesser employee salary and negligible attrition rate. 

“There are many benefits of operating out of smaller cities and towns, including opening up a wider talent pool, lower operational costs, and unlocking a variety of new languages,” said Aditya Arora, chief executive of Teleperformance India.

The French business services company, which has around 70,000 employees in India, already has presence in several tier-II cities such as Indore, Mohali and Jaipur. Arora said hiring talent using digital platform is now helping the company reach a far more diverse talent pool in smaller cities across the country. 

“In the past three months, we have hired over 12,000 people on our innovative Teleperformance Cloud Campus, which handles recruitment, training, learning, development and performance management of employees — all online.”

Today, BPM services get delivered from 67 locations all over the country. However, 90 per cent of the IT and BPM business works in the country get delivered from 11 locations. 

According to K S Viswanathan, vice-president (industry initiatives) at Nasscom, the industry body is working with the government to tap into the hinterland for additional BPM services like data validation and technology-based disintegration and integration of BPO services. “Data validation services could entail labelling services, cleaning and anointment of data that may not require any special expertise and can be executed from tier-III and -IV towns,” Viswanathan said.