New Delhi, Aug. 13: Zensar Technologies, the information technology company of the RPG Group, has started a new trend in the business process outsourcing (BPO) services: it is sending its employees overseas for short stints at the client's premises.

It is usual for software companies to station employees at offsite locations to help service clients on the spots. But it’s rare for a BPO company to go down the same road.

There is no compelling need for BPO companies to station their employees onsite. But it is now being seen as a sensible way to help employees plug into different cultures and imbibe their social and behavioural patterns. The best thing is that it is a very good way to retain employees in a very fickle, attrition-ridden job market where an overseas posting is a very lucrative bait.

“Our BPO staff, be it call centre agents, transaction processing administrators or trainers are given a chance to go abroad and work for a duration of about two to six months,” says Ganesh Natarajan, deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies.

Zensar employees being sent abroad include those who are just graduates and have been with the company for at least six months. Usually, a trainer, a migration manager or the process owner accompanies the team to oversee the delivery process as well as lead interactions with the customer.

“Our customers have faces to the names and voices that work for them. It is easier for them to connect and believe that their processes are in safe hands. The transition is very detailed and our employees working on-site help freeze metrics and service level agreements with our customers with greater ease. It has also helped to demonstrate to our customers, how we train our employees to think differently and optimise processes,” says Natarajan.

Zensar has a partnership with an Irish and UK call centre. “All our call centre agents are sent to this entity on rotational basis for training and to understand the culture and transfer their knowledge back to the floor. The nature of our non-voice processes are very critical and core to our customers. This year we will be sending employees to the US.”

Attrition rates in the BPO space can be as high as 40 per cent, which can undermine the stability and continuity of processes within the organisation.

Manjiri Gokhale, head (human resources) at Zensar BPO, says, “Employees learn to work as a team. It is a dream for most of our employees to go abroad at such a young age and they believe, it adds a lot of value to them as professionals. Teams are cross-trained in processes to give a fair chance to all employees. Employees are also shown a growth path. Role-rotation is one of our key HR strategies to keep our people happy.”

The aim behind such an initiative was to instill a sense of seriousness among the 20-year-olds and give them the strong message that they have a career ahead, said Gokhale.