BPOs hire more trainees amid demand uptick

Bengaluru: Business Process Management(BPM) service providers are hiring more number of apprentices in order to check the rising attrition seen in the BPO space.

The scenario is very much similar to the IT services sector wherein the companies are hiring a large number of fresh engineering graduates on the back of demand uptick.

"The BPO companies are employing a lot of apprentices from colleges across the country in various domains in order to keep them human resources ready to cash in from the emerging demand. Therefore, hiring of apprentices has surged by36 per cent in June despite the partial shutdowns," said Sumit Kumar, Business Head at NETAP (National Employability through Apprenticeship Programme) at TeamLease Skills University.

"The demand has been for roles like back-end operations, tele-callers, sales, customer support (voice & non-voice), medical transcriptions, accountants and many more," he added.

Apprentices are the fresh college graduates who are taken as trainee by the companies for a certain period of time. By the end of the training period, the company usually absorbs many such apprentices into their payrolls.

According to industry estimates, the BPO sector employs around 60,000 apprentices every year. Out of these trainee fresh graduates, around 40 per cent are absorbed by the companies into their payrolls per annum.

Experts said that the surge in demand for these trainee graduates is likely to continue for next three months. "30 per cent further increase is expected in the next three months in the BPO sector," said Kumar.

Like IT players, even the BPO sector is also facing rising attrition levels in the last one year. As most services go touchless and digital, demand for BPM services has seen a sudden spike.

Also, the usual attrition rates of BPO sector have always been higher than the IT sector. "On one hand, the demand has been high in the BPM sector, while the attrition levels are also not falling. To bridge these gaps, BPO players are taking up many trainees to keep them future ready," said a technology expert.