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BPO staff to work from home
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 16:51 IST
New Delhi: The government has given its approval to agents working at call centers and other service providers to work from home. They can work from home, which will result in low operating costs and bringing more people including women and the physically challenged into the work force.
The department of telecom (DoT) has introduced the concept of work-from-home agents for the companies registered under the Other Service Providers (OSPs) category who would have to pay Rs 5 crore bank guarantee for this purpose.
Services like call centers, network operation centers, tele-marketing, tele-education, tele-medicine and tele-trading come under OSPs.
Pramod Bhasin, President & CEO, Genpact said, "It will help fight attrition and traffic blues, lower costs, and allow many more people to join the workforce. It's a great move, but I need to look into details." Genpact was experimenting with work-from-home initiatives for employees in functional domains like finance, legal and HR.
Raman Roy, Managing Director, Quatrro BPO Solutions said, "This could be the game-changer for India and the industry. It could make attrition problems history. However, the devil is in the details and we need to see the terms and conditions,". Nasscom former President Kiran Karnik added, "The industry has been asking for this for long. It would allow those who are home-bound like differently-able people and women to work in the BPO industry and earn, too."
Some BPO firms will not be able make full use of the concept due to security concerns. "Clients have a whole host of security concerns and access to information to employees is allowed in a tightly controlled environment. Security concerns reduce the lure of work-from-home and it's no longer a viable option for us," said Firstsource Solutions chief technology officer Sanjiv Dalal.
Some BPO companies took the line that there was no clarity on interconnection between local and international telecom networks. Indian laws prohibit such interconnection. But in its absence, agents working from home won't be able to call an international customer using their domestic telecom network.
