If you were a bank employee, probably with access to the accounts of international clients, would you take kindly to being fingerprinted, photographed and put into a rogues? gallery? Our bank unions would no doubt be out on the streets the next day if such an idea were mooted. For once, they would be in the right.

Yet, once more the proposal is raising its ugly head in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. Following the theft of $350,000 from US Citibank accounts by employees of the Pune centre of MphasiS, which manages part of the bank?s back-office operations, BPO stalwarts have once again started talking of an employee blacklist. Nasscom says that it will soon flag off a national employee registry styled Fortress India. According to the association, it will get cracking in four weeks.

A similar idea had been proposed by Nasscom earlier. It was suggested that a blacklist of BPO employees be created. The claimed purpose was to ensure security. The real reason was to curb attrition, which in some firms is as high as 100 per cent.

THE DOOMSAYERS

What the Pune identity theft could mean

• It’s a blow to MphasiS’ move to focus on BPO. This incident is going to lengthen sales cycles, slow clients' expansion of current business, and cost it new business. • Process and certification cannot counter employee churn at BPO companies. While the centre in Pune was BS 7799- and CMM Level 5-certified, the breach still occurred. • Call centre BPO growth could drop by as much as 30%. • More regulation and enforcement will be called for and implemented. To bolster its offshore credibility, India will also have to tighten its data protection and privacy laws. • Nasscom must redouble its efforts. The Indian industry association will have to go beyond promotion and begin lobbying the government on issues like tightening cyber laws and creating a more comprehensive system for checking backgrounds.

Source: Forrester Research

That proposal had to bite the dust but Fortress India has probably more chances of succeeding.

The main reason is the climate of fear engendered after the Pune identity theft, which involved more than a dozen people (most of whom have been arrested). The US press, which has been working overtime to stop BPO deals coming India?s way, is going to town about security risks. Forrester Research has pulled a wonderful figure of 30 per cent out of its hat. This, it says, is how much the incident could impact BPO growth rates.

MphasiS started the right way. It dismissed the incident as something that could happen anywhere. The client accounts were pilfered not because of some software glitch or security lapse. The company blamed ?gullible? account holders who parted with their passwords and personal identification numbers. None of the people involved had criminal records. So would Fortress India have stopped them?

?It?s a wolf in sheep?s clothing,? says the HR manager at a leading BPO, who wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. ?The registry will do nothing to stop such cybercrimes. It will only give employers an additional handle to try and check attrition. But this is an invasion of privacy and totally unacceptable.?

Additionally, it is an acceptance of Western claim that Indian BPO employees are just the coolies of the modern world. They are ill-educated, they have criminal tendencies and their only advantage is that they come at dirt cheap rates. Nasscom is hurting the long-term interests of the BPO industry through this knee-jerk reaction.

What makes BPO different from, say, IT (where there are no calls for an employee blacklist)? The answer is the much higher rates of attrition. Forget the blah about boring jobs and working conditions. It?s because someone else can offer to pay a higher salary and woo away employees.

The solution to the problem is: pay the employees well and they won?t jump ship so frequently. (The comparison should not be made with what these people could otherwise earn; what matters is what other BPOs can afford to pay them.) But these are the Wild West days of the BPO industry. If you need a national registry of any sort, it is probably of the robber barons who are taking advantage of the situation. Before the Spectraminds and the IBMs cry foul, let us clarify that we are not talking about the organised sector, but the large number of fly-by-nights who are setting up shop all over the place.