'Good times will come back'

With more than 8,000 employees and counting still they have plans to hire 1,500 employees by March next year even in this economic downturn -- 24/7 Customer has emerged as one of the best IT-enabled services and a business process outsourcing company in India.

Shanmugam Nagarajan -- affectionately called Nag -- the co-founder and chief people's officer at 24/7 Customer, feels that young graduates and those who are already employed should not feel disheartened because of the current economic downturn. "Good times will come back; after all the downturns and upturns are cyclical in nature," says he.

In a telephonic interview with Prasanna D Zore Nag emphasises -- among other things -- on what HR managers should do to motivate and engage their employees in the current economic environment and gives five tips to young grads on coping with the situation.

What prompted you to start 24/7 Customer?

Basically I've seen the IT industries off shoring boom and when I was running my products company we were developing a software platform for integrated customer relationship management. That time we found that our clients were struggling to hire enough manpower to man their contact centers. One of our customers then asked us to start offering services also instead of selling just products. That's how the idea came and in 2000 we had started a services company.

In spite of the IT boom then not everybody was employed because IT needed domain expertise. We had hundreds and thousands of graduates but not all could be absorbed in the IT sector. There was an employability gap between what the industry demanded and what we produced. So while there was supply in terms of people from India we could provide an opportunity to thousands of Indians by starting an IT-enabled services business.

Are you done with your hiring plans for this year?

No. We keep hiring. 24/7 Customer has witnessed steady business growth and has plans of hiring across its delivery centers. This year, 24/7 Customer has plans of hiring close to 2000 employees globally, for the fiscal year (April 1, 2009 to March 10, 2010). Last year, we hired 2,500 people. Over the next two quarters (October to March), 24/7 Customer has plans of hiring more than 1,250 to 1,500 people across India (400), Guatemala (400) and the Philippines (the rest).

What's the attrition rate at 24/7 Customer in specific and the entire BPO and KPO sector?

While the industry-wise attrition rate is 60 to 65 per cent ours is close to 32 per cent.

How do you explain such high attrition rates even as we are in the midst of an economic slowdown?

That's because different people count it differently. Some people count it before training and some people count it after training or after giving the offer letter. We count attrition rate only after we give offer letter to our employees.

What should HR managers focus on right now? What should they do to make their employees feel confident about their job and how does it help in the overall growth of a company?

Basically, we need to give them a good perspective about what's happening globally and how things are not going to change because of the economic downturn right now; good times will come back. Tell them how the BPO market is not yet saturated and India has yet barely scratched the surface of an industry that has huge employment potential.

The current phase is just a lull and no other industry will give you such a global career. The future belongs to people who can work comfortably and confidently in any geographies. Our industry prepares people for a global career.

Is sacking employees the only way to control costs?

I can't even count two companies in the BPO industry that have sacked employees to cut costs except for a couple of companies who had their captive centers in India which had to close down, like Lehman Brothers. Anyway we have such high attrition rates that even if BPO companies want to fire people they can't. It was only IT companies that were firing people but even that have stopped now.

Five things employees should do to overcome hardships brought about by the economic slowdown...

• Focus on the right job and try to gain skills in your domain to do well in your job. Because of the bad economic condition not many companies will be hiring but if young grads are willing to work as interns or apprentices I'm sure a number of them would be hired. Youngsters should even look for jobs that may not necessarily pay them more but give them valuable on job experience in the short run. This will also help them to be in the frontline when hiring starts again.
• Keep yourself up-to-date in terms of knowledge level. The downtime now should not make you obsolete. Today most of the knowledge can be obtained from the Internet almost free.
• One can keep expanding their network not only amongst friends and families but also amongst friends' friends and families.
• One can even utilise her/his time to think about what kind of career they want. With a host of new-age industries that provide global as well as local jobs it is just about good time to ponder over your career move. They can do a recce on which company is doing well, where are the job opportunities, what skill sets are prospective employers looking at etc.
• Lastly, they can teach in their spare time if they are not getting any meaningful employment. This will help them keep in touch with the latest technology and ideas. They can also teach under-privileged kids as this will help them feel good about themselves and make them feel that they are utilising their downtime fruitfully.