India’s outsourcing industry faces 15% manpower shortfall
A dearth of skilled manpower plagues India's outsourcing industry, study says.
A shortage of skilled workers continues to plague the Indian outsourcing industry, according to a study conducted by RocSearch, a UK-India research firm which provides research and analytics support to research and consulting firms, brand and marketing communication companies, and investment advisory corporations
The study indicated that a shortage of skilled workers continue to plague the Indian outsourcing industry as it struggles with the issues of sourcing, training and maintaining skilled manpower while trying to sustain a rapid development rate.
This came as India’s outsourcing industry seems to be picking up its pace with the country’s recent $40 billion bilateral trade agreement with China, which involves the exportation of cotton, organic and inorganic chemicals, iron and steel to China. The agreement has manufacturing and IT experts in India saying that though there seems to be no end in sight when it comes to the country’s growth, India still has a lot of leg-work to do to catch up with the outsourcing boom of its neighboring countries.
The results of the research, launched at the CII’s 3rd Annual Outsourcing Summit held at New Delhi shows that even with India fast becoming Asia’s outsourcing hub, a dearth of skilled manpower, coupled with a lack of government support continues to be a major issue for the country’s outsourcing sector, with organizations facing a manpower shortfall of almost 15%.
Almost half of the companies included in the research reported that turn-over rate was 20-30%, with the average career tenure ranging between 1-2 years. And with employable workers at entry level positions at less than 10%, companies are left with a feeling that internal training resources will not be enough to overcome the manpower situation.
Ashish Sinha, COO of RocSearch says that “the biggest challenge before BPOs is talent retention and finding skilled manpower. The only way to curb attrition is to train the existing employees and develop a career path within the same organization.”
Sinha suggests that for organizations to address the manpower problems plaguing the industry, companies must include industry-institution interfacing and partnership, with intra-industry collaboration for talent pool expansion. Companies must formulate skill-based quality certifications for training and supplement existing training resources within the organization.
Sinha says that by creating structured retention programs and focusing on work enrichment and enhancement together with employee development and simplifying knowledge management programs to shorten learning curves will improve customer focus as well lessen the impact of attrition to any outsourcing organization.
