The Hindu Business Line : Now, BPOs make employees responsible for P&L accounts

After IT services firms, it's now the turn of BPO/contact centre firms to sensitise their delivery personnel on business metrics such as profit and loss (P&L) accounts. BPO firms are now seen making their employees at the level of team leaders and above responsible for the P&L account.

In the process, companies such as 24/7 Customer, who have already implemented the concept for about a year now, claimed that they have been able to curb the attrition at the team leader level, Mr S. Nagarajan, founder and COO, said.

"This has also helped us create and raise the aspirations of our employees," he added.

Team leaders normally manage a team of agents and are accountable for operational metrics such as delivering the required service level agreements (SLAs). They are primarily responsible for the performance of team members.

"By making the team leaders responsible for P&L, we are making them accountable for some level of revenues and some level of profitability," said Mr V. Bharathwaj, Vice-President, global marketing, 24/7 Customer.

A team leader at 24/7 Customer, with an average age of 26-28 years, would now handle a business of between Rs 5 crore and Rs 10 crore, he added.

To cut costs

Xansa, the UK-based IT services and BPO firm, which has already introduced this concept till the level of delivery and process managers, wants to push it down further to the team leader-level, said Mr Sanjiv Tandon, Director, India operations and corporate affairs.

Xansa believes that introducing such a concept at the delivery level would reduce its costs, improve margins and keep its employee motivated, he said. "We are looking at training our employees responsible for delivery to make them understand the P&L concept," Mr Tandon said. This also helps delivery people understand their contribution to the P&L account apart from creating a career growth path, he said.

Impact on attrition

The TransWorks' CEO, Mr Atul Kunwar, believes that this concept may work well where the size of the teams and the processes they run are smaller. However, in larger teams, which run into several hundreds employees, the concept may not work well. At TransWorks, the P&L responsibility is managed at the account level.

"While the concept helps employees to learn newer aspects of the business, it is too premature to talk about its impact on the attrition," Mr Kunwar adds.

At Intelenet Global Services, the team leaders are responsible for driving the revenues, said Mr Sandeep Agarwal, Vice-President, sales and solutions. P&L in BPOs is largely linked to the costs of salary, infrastructure and connectivity that are determined by the market factors and on which delivery personnel like team leaders do not have any influence or control. "We don't have any plans to make the team leaders responsible for the P&L," said Mr Ramesh Ganesan, COO, Intelenet.

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