Hotels losing staff to call centres

The hospitality sector is fast losing its workforce to call centres.

"Hotels are becoming a casualty, as many trained professional are getting highly-paid jobs in call centres," Nirupama VG, executive vice-president of Teamlease Services, the temping solutions company, said.

The salary differential is nearly 50-400 per cent, and according to recent estimates, attrition rates in the hospitality sector are up from 9 per cent to 43 per cent and the exodus is primarily into processes-led call centre jobs.

"Increasingly, employees in the services sector are seeing that the skills required within the hotels, call centres and tourism/travelling are very transferable. This 'transferable skill' set is leading to more people moving out," Nirupama said.

Another reason driving this outflow is the high salaries the call centres are now offering. "The average salary is five times what an employee gets in a hotel, and by no means can a hospitality company match them. So, more people are moving out," she said.

This inter-sector movement is not happening in the hospitality sector only. A lot of journalists are also moving out to business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs.

"The main reason for this is again the transferable skill factor. Lot of media organisations like Reuters are hiring journalists for several backoffice jobs. The documentation skills required in the BPO sector are making it easier for journalists to be adept in BPO jobs and the higher salary is an added advantage," she said.

Such a trend had initially been witnessed in the telecom sector, where many executive from marketing shifted to telecom.

"Executives are also seeing that the marketing roles have not changed. Most executives do not see a difference between selling bubble gum and chips. So, in last few months, nearly 7-8 major marketing heads have moved to the telecom companies as they see more exposure there," she said.

Most executives are also not hesitating to move to rural areas as regional heads as they are seeing more career growth. "It is not just inter-sector movements, but we are seeing a lot of officials wanting to take up jobs in cities like Chandigarh, Vishakapatnam, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Nearly, 110-12 top executives of various companies got placed in smaller cities with a salary hike of nearly 20 per cent," she said.