Recruiting in China

The call centre employees in India are the most frequent job-hoppers among their Asian peers with an average job tenure of as low as nine months, a new survey says.

According to an annual report for the Asian contact centre industry released by callcentres.net, the average job tenure of call centre agents in India is the lowest at 11 months, while it is even lower at nine months for those having left their jobs in the past one year.

Identifying attrition and hiring as their top challenges for 2008, call centres in the country are now focusing on financial incentives and other rewards in their bid to retain the right talent, said callcentres.net, a leading Asian research firm focused on contact centres and outsourcing industries.
Absenteeism on decline
The study found that absenteeism or sick leave in the Indian call centres has declined to an average of nine days per annum this year from 15 days in 2007, but employee tenure is still a major issue.

Stating that the average tenure of nine months in India is the lowest in the region for those having left jobs in past one year, the report said that comparable figures at other places are 22 months in Philippines, 20 months in Malaysia, 18 months for Singapore, 17 months for Thailand and 12 months for China.

The study also found that smaller call centres in India, or those having less than 100 seats, have lower average agent tenure of 10 months, as compared to the larger centres where the tenure is close to 15 months.
Human resource management
"This may suggest that larger centres are recruiting agents from smaller centres, or that they are able to provide greater investment in human resource management, thereby holding onto agents for a longer time," it noted.

"The average age of workforce in contact centre is far below 30 years. This age group takes up a job in call centres for earning quick money. They don't look at it as a serious career," callcentre.net President Catriona Wallace said.

However, close to 70 per cent of Indian contact centre agents who left their jobs in the last 12 months chose to work in another contact centre, instead of leaving the industry altogether. This compares with 50-76 per cent of agents deciding to leave the industry in countries like Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, China and Malaysia.

The study said that Indian players have identified their primary challenges for this year as employee attrition, recruitment, training and implementing new service channels.
Career planning
"Indian contact centre executives are attempting to improve human resource management results by offering financial incentives, reward and recognition programmes and better career planning for agents," it noted.

According to the survey, the contact centre managers named financial incentives and recognition programmes as the most successful strategies implemented in the last 12 months.

For retaining employees, 37 per cent of contact centre managers ranked monetary incentives as a major tool. Besides, 22 per cent managers said reward and recognition programme helps retaining candidates and 18 per cent termed career planning as the most effective tool.
Salaries
The study said that a 32 per cent increase in manager's base salaries also demonstrated that the Indian contact centre industry recognised importance of rewarding a good leadership.

Other evidence of an increased focus on managing human resources was an increase in the average number of days of training an experienced agent receives, which has risen to 14 days this year from 11 days in 2007 for an agent who had been with the centre for over 12 months.