The blossoming IT services sector in India has learnt many lessons on staffing from manufacturing. Heavy competition and the economic downturn notwithstanding, TCS has managed a 6.3 per cent reduction in the average employee cost every year over 2007-2013, as per HfS Research. The data shows that the percentage of freshers hired increased from 51 per cent to 81 per cent during this period – which the research firm points out, is the likely reason for maintaining such a low headcount cost.
Apart from these big-bang shifts, there are other smaller trends the services sector seems to be borrowing from manufacturing. “Particularly in BPOs, background checks have been borrowed from manufacturing. As the industry evolved, it became an important part of HR, particularly when people were jumping jobs in BPOs too quickly or when cases of fraudulent education degrees were reported,” says Sanchit Gogia, chief analyst and CEO, Greyhound Research. Ditto with conflict resolution. These could be territorial wars, like deciding who gets to “go to the US” and who stays back. “How do you ensure people dependency and their expectations are managed? Services has learnt this from manufacturing,” opines Gogia.
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