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Building Cross-Sector Careers in India’s New Service Economy? Tracking Former Call Centre Agents in the National Capital Region

Bhaskar Vira and Al James ABSTRACT This article presents findings from a labour mobility survey of 250 former call centre agents in India’s National Capital Region (September 2008) exploring individuals’ employment before, during and immediately after leaving India’s high-profile call centre ‘industry’. These data are combined with forty-two in-depth interviews conducted in India’s NCR (July 2006 to August 2008) with call centre agents, managers, ex-call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries. The study gives a cautiously optimistic account about the call centre work and employment opportunities on offer in India’s ‘IT Enabled Services – Business Processing Outsourcing’ (or ITES-BPO) industry, and their implications for young urban middle class graduates based on: (i) the movement of around one fifth of the ex-call centre agent sample into further study, facilitated by relatively high call centre salaries; (ii) the movement of ex-call centre agents into higher paying job roles in a wide range of sectors including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications; and (iii) the development of transferable skills in Indian call centres that are recognized by ex-call centre agents and their subsequent employers as conferring a labour market advantage in other sectors of India’s new service economy relative to colleagues without prior call centre work experience.

INTRODUCTION

The offshoring of voice-based service work from the Global North continues to prompt widespread debate across multiple academic disciplines, policy institutions, labour organizations and the media. As the prime global destination for call centre work offshored from the USA, UK and Australia across a range of vertical markets including banking, insurance, technology and telecoms, as well as travel, retail, media and entertainment, energy The authors are grateful to the Nuffield Foundation (Grant number SGS32848), Smuts Memorial Fund and the Isaac Newton Trust, University of Cambridge, which provided support for the project on which this paper is based, and to the editors of the journal and three anonymous referees for their feedback on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimers apply. Development and Change 43(2): 449–479. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01768.x 2012 International Institute of Social Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA

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and utilities, India takes centre stage in this discussion (Nasscom-Everest, 2008: 38). Indeed, as many as 400 of the Fortune 500 companies now have call centre operations in India, either through third-party providers, or by establishing their own local in-house or ‘captive’ operations (Budhwar et al., 2006b: 882; Hunter, 2006). However, while the growth of India’s call centres over the last decade has outpaced national income and employment growth many times over (Hay Group/Manpower India, 2006), the popular discourses surrounding them remain highly polarized between ‘utopian dream’ and ‘dystopian nightmare’ (Knights and Jones, 2007). On the one hand, they are celebrated by India’s national government as important providers of ‘decent work’ (ILO, 1999), a vital means to absorb India’s growing cohort of young ‘educated unemployed’ (Jeffrey, 2009: 183) and as bolstering India’s transition to a new globalized service economy. On the other hand, however, India’s call centres have also become subject to a series of high-profile critiques in terms of the quality of the work and employment opportunities they offer to the well-educated, urban, middle class graduates who form the vast majority of their workforce: The call centre has become the symbol of India’s newly globalized workforce: while traditional India sleeps, a dynamic young cohort of highly skilled, articulate professionals works through the night . . . earning salaries that were undreamt of by their elders (but a fraction of what an American would make) and enjoying a lifestyle that’s a cocktail of premature affluence and ersatz westernization transplanted to an Indian setting. It’s been a major breakthrough for India and Indians . . . But many in India see the call centres as soaking up the talents and energies of young Indians who could and should be doing better for themselves and their country. (Tharoor 2007: 17–18)

Reinforcing such criticisms, studies of Indian call centres servicing Western clients have documented the dominance of a mass production model and associated monotony of routine, scripted work with low levels of employee discretion (Taylor and Bain, 2005; Thite and Russell, 2007); health and social problems as a consequence of night work (Kesavachandran et al., 2006); frequent instances of racist abuse from customers (Mirchandani, 2003); a lack of internal promotion opportunities (Batt et al., 2005); and a lack of training in transferable skills (Remesh, 2004). These, in turn, are argued to drive high levels of call centre worker attrition of between 30 per cent (Batt et al., 2005) and 40 per cent per year (Kuruvilla and Ranganathan, 2010) (against a global average of 20 per cent; Holman et al., 2007), and the eventual loss of agents from the industry altogether. Thus, for some commentators, work experience in India’s call centres does not confer a labour market advantage on young Indian graduates (Pradhan and Abraham, 2005). Instead it represents the latest phase of a neocolonial project in which the talents and skills of India’s educated elite are in fact wasted because ‘highly educated men and women of colour in the Global South are engaged in the type of employment that is conventionally associated with deskilled and feminized work in the North’ (Mirchandani, 2005: 114).

Tracking Former Call Centre Agents in India’s NCR

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In this article we seek to situate these polarized discourses surrounding Indian call centre work as part of a broader and more nuanced cross-sectoral employment reality for young urban, middle class graduates working in India’s new service economy. We argue that while previous research has provided fascinating insights into the employment experiences of Indian call centre agents, once an agent exits call centre employment, they are typically lost from the analysis. Consequently, the wider development implications of call centre employment in India’s ‘IT Enabled Services – Business Processing Outsourcing’ (ITES-BPO) industry are at best partially understood, and at worst prematurely dismissed. In response, we adopt an alternative longitudinal work history approach that tracks the mobility of 250 ex-call centre agents between firms in India’s National Capital Region (NCR) using a regional-scale survey (September 2008) to explore individuals’ employment prior to, during, and immediately after departing India’s high profile call centre ‘industry’.1 These data are combined with findings from fortytwo in-depth interviews conducted in the NCR (July 2006 to August 2008) with call centre agents, managers, ex-call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries. Together, these data allow us to answer a series of important questions, namely: where do India’s call centre agents go to when they quit the call centre, ‘industry’,?2 What skills do ex-call centre agents identify as having been learned through different types of call centre work in India? And to what extent do they, and their subsequent employers, regard those skills as transferrable to other sectors of India’s new service economy and as conferring upon them a labour market advantage relative to other workers without prior call centre work experience? Based on our empirical analysis we offer a cautiously optimistic account of the work, employment and training opportunities on offer in India’s call centres, and their longer-term developmental implications for some members of the young urban middle class to develop careers and secure upward mobility. The article proceeds as follows. In the next section we present a critical review of the debates surrounding the value and significance of call centres as an Indian graduate career choice, and the nuanced reality of Indian call centre work as revealed in a series of recent innovative cross-firm and cross-sectoral studies. Following a presentation of our methods and evidence base, the next section documents: (i) the consistency of our NCR agent sample (N = 250) with other large-scale survey samples of call centre agents elsewhere in India; (ii) the movement of 20 per cent of our 1. A separate paper based on our empirical research discusses career pathways internal to the call centre industry (James and Vira, forthcoming). 2. Despite the use of this shorthand term by some commentators in the Indian context, it is recognized that rather than there being a call centre ‘industry’, call centre operations are found in a wide range of industries (e.g. banking, financial services, health, public administration, transport, communication) (Glucksman, 2004: 796).

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survey sample into further study, facilitated by relatively high call centre salaries; (iii) the movement of ex-call centre agents in the NCR into higher paying job roles in a wide range of sectors including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications; and (iv) the development of transferable skills in Indian call centres that are recognized by our sample of ex-call centre agents (and subsequent employers) as conferring a labour market advantage in other sectors of India’s new service economy. The article concludes by outlining important avenues for future research.

CALL CENTRES AS AN INDIAN GRADUATE CAREER CHOICE?

Call centres in India are classified under the broader ITES-BPO industrial category, of which ‘60–65 per cent of services fall within the call centre space and 35–40 per cent are back office activities’ (Taylor et al., 2008: 38). Widely heralded as India’s ‘sunshine sector’ (Remesh, 2004), the ITES-BPO sector has exhibited impressive growth over the last decade, accounting for 13 per cent of India’s national GDP growth (exceeding 7 per cent p.a.) in 2003–04 and 2005–06 (Hay Group/Manpower India, 2006), and with total exports of US$ 10.9 billion in 2008, an increase of 34 per cent during the previous five years (Nasscom-Everest, 2008: 28). Employment growth in India’s ITES-BPO industry has also been impressive, increasing sharply from 180,000 workers in 2003 to 704,000 workers in 2008 (ibid.: 28), to 1.29 million workers in 2010 (Nivsarkar, 2010). Underpinning this growth, India’s attractiveness for offshoring call centres from the UK, US and Australia lies in its large pool of English-speaking graduates and operating cost savings of 25–50 per cent relative to locations in the Global North (Nasscom, 2007; Nasscom-McKinsey, 2005).3 Growth has also been supported institutionally through the activities of Nasscom (India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies) which promotes the ITESBPO industry as one of the nation’s leading global industries, and takes pride in the calibre of the multinational corporations that have outsourced call centre functions to India including HSBC, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, DELL, American Express, Genpact, Convergys and GE Capital (see Mitter et al., 2004): India’s offshore industries . . . have played a major role in transforming India from a slowgrowth economy with recurring balance of payments problems to a fast-growth economy generating ample foreign exchange surpluses. Millions of Indians have benefited directly from these industries, and the industries’ contribution to the nation’s economy and global standing has been immense. (NASSCOM-McKinsey, 2005: 22) 3. Also, since 1990, the Indian government has implemented a raft of economic liberalization strategies to encourage foreign direct investment. This has been reinforced by the abolition of India’s former telephony monopolies which, alongside significant global expansion in bandwidth, continue to reduce unit costs for telephony.


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Nasscom’s boosterist sentiments around India’s offshore services industry are echoed by several other high-profile commentators in terms of the ‘enormous employment and entrepreneurial opportunities’ they offer (Dossani and Kenney, 2007: 772; see also Business Week, 2003; Time Magazine, 2006). As part of this, Thomas Friedman (2006: 240) has argued that: ‘from the Indian worker’s perspective . . . outsourcing, could be seen as another name for empowering individuals in the developing world as never before, enabling them to nurture, exploit, and profit from their God-given intellectual talents’. The significance of call centres as employers in India’s new service economy needs to be understood in the context of post-reform economic growth in India, in which economic growth rates have not been associated with commensurate job creation (Chandrashekhar, 2010), resulting in significant problems of unemployment and underemployment (Jha, 2004; Thite and Russell, 2007; see also Das, 2002). Indeed, Jeffrey et al. (2008) have linked this to one of the most unsettling paradoxes of contemporary social change in the Global South: at the same time as increasing numbers of people have come to recognize the possibilities held out by education for individual improvement, opportunities for them to benefit from that education are undermined by limited opportunities for young people to obtain secure well-paid work.4 Against this backdrop, call centres have provided new opportunities for India’s young, educated, urban middle classes to engage in ‘decent work’ (see Ramesh, 2005),5 and for young Indian women in particular to gain new financial independence (Mitter et al., 2004: 177; Slater, 2004), and thereby to challenge long-standing patriarchal family models (Patel, 2010; Pradhan and Abraham, 2005). As such, ‘call centres have become magnets for urban Indian youth, providing them with incomes sometimes greater than their parents’, and ‘a chance to work in an environment with people of their own age . . . young people with disposable incomes who are, to a large extent, free from parental overview (most young Indians live at home)’ (Kamdar, 2007: 42). In direct opposition to these positive assessments, however, critics have argued that the jobs available in India’s call centres are in fact exploitative and represent a neocolonial waste of India’s young, educated, urban middle class elite, based on a continual racialized hierarchy within Indian call centres

4. Arguably, this is a global trend, reflected most recently in unrest in parts of North Africa and the Middle East. 5. The notion of ‘decent work’ emphasizes four inter-related elements: employment (adequate opportunities and remuneration for work, safety at work, and healthy working conditions); social security (protection against the risk of losing income); workers’ rights (freedom of association, non-discrimination in work, absence of forced labour and child labour in abusive conditions); and social dialogue (right of workers to engage in discussions and authorities over matters bearing upon work) (Ghai, 2002: 1–2; ILO, 1999).

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between white and other (Mirchandani, 2005: 113).6 On one level, these criticisms have been expressed by commentators in the media and film industries, one of the most well-known being Chetan Bhagat’s One Night at the Call Centre in which he satirizes the work lives of young graduates working night shifts in Indian call centres in order to serve Western clients in real time: I am angry. Because every day I see some of the world’s strongest and smartest people in my country. I see all this potential, yet it is all getting wasted. An entire generation up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their lives. . . . Meanwhile bad bosses and stupid Americans suck the life blood out of our country’s most productive generation. (Bhagat, 2005: 253–4)

Importantly, such criticisms also find support in academic studies of Indian call centre work and employment, such as the research carried out by Babu Remesh at the VV Giri National Labour Institute, based on a sample of 277 call centre agents in six call centres in Noida: (T)hese agents represent a group of expensively educated cheap labour. Most of these youngsters are in fact burning out their formative years as ‘cyber coolies’, the toll of which is very high. Entering well-paid employment soon after the completion of graduation acts as a deterrent to continue studies. Further to this, BPO work does not provide any scope for skill upgradation. Most workers in the sector are doing low-end work, which were [sic] handled by erstwhile computer operators and receptionists. Rather than picking up accents and certain communication skills, the skill upgradation is minimal. (Remesh, 2004: 496)

While Remesh’s ‘cyber coolies’ label has since been recognized as ‘overdrawn’ (Taylor et al., 2008) subsequent work has nevertheless documented a series of problems variously experienced by Indian call centre agents, both within the workplace and across the work–home boundary. Notably, as part of the high-profile multi-country Global Call Centres Project (Holman et al., 2007), the Indian leg of the project surveyed sixty general managers of call centres in six cities (Bangalore, Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata), generating a final dataset that covered a total Indian call centre workforce of 34,289 employees (Batt et al., 2005). Problems identified in this national study include: extensive electronic monitoring and supervisory pressure yielding worker distrust of managers; a substantial reliance on scripting with low levels of agent discretion over daily tasks, procedures and pace of work; infrequent use of problem-solving groups and teams; limited opportunities for internal career advancement as a function of flattened 6. Moreover, critics have also argued that the ideologies of prosperity surrounding the rise of India’s new service economy have not benefited the vast majority of urban poor and rural Indian citizens who continue to struggle for their basic needs (food, water, shelter, primary education and medical care) (Parameswaran, 2008: 117), and who are in fact paying for the costs of siphoning state resources to develop a world class technological infrastructure (Pradhan and Abraham, 2005; see also Levy, 2005; Varma, 2007).


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organizational hierarchies; and limited meaningful points of entry from call centres into high level positions elsewhere in the companies surveyed. The result of agents’ repeated exposure to these negative work and employment experiences are the high levels of workplace attrition that are rife within India’s call centres (Bhatnagar, 2007; Budhwar et al., 2006a) and the eventual loss of agents from the industry altogether who, according to some commentators, leave the industry without any subsequent labour market advantage: They neither possess the necessary skills to be employed in the high-end BPO sector nor the skills to get other professional work. Working in call centers for five years or so, just answering or making a phone call, makes these young people unskilled for employment in any other sector . . . the social benefits of short-run employment opportunities made available by call centers are likely to have a very high social cost in the long-run, creating high unemployment in certain sectors and other related social problems. (Pradhan and Abraham, 2005: 17–18)

However, it is also important to note other studies which have posited a more nuanced set of work and employment realities in India’s call centres than is typically portrayed in media and policy circles. Upadhya and Vasavi’s (2006) research in Bangalore points to some ambivalence in the ways in which call centre work is perceived. While the authors point to ‘a widespread perception both within and outside the industry that this kind of work experience does not add anything to employees’ skills or resumes’ (ibid.: 137), a number of their respondents in the ITES-BPO sector also felt that they had ‘learned valuable skills that they believe will help them in their future careers’ (ibid.: 136). Similarly, D’Cruz and Noronha’s (2007) study of call centre work in technical call centres in Mumbai and Bangalore concludes that ‘the widely maintained notion that call centres are mere electronic sweatshops or assembly lines in the head whose employees’ tasks are characterized by low complexity, low variety and low autonomy, represents a limited viewpoint’ (ibid.: 65). It is also important to recognize the rapidly expanding — yet strangely under-researched — ‘domestic’ ITES-BPO segment servicing Indian consumer markets. This accounts for 21 per cent of India’s total ITES-BPO employees (Nasscom-Everest, 2008: 263), and continues to exhibit a faster rate of revenue growth than the overall Indian ITES-BPO market — for example, a compound annual rate of revenue growth of 51 per cent 2003–2008, yielding 2008 revenues of US$ 1.57 billion (ibid.: 47). Because this domestic segment serves Indian customers in real time, its agents are less affected by the problems of racist abuse from customers, national identity management, locational masking, and the health and social issues surrounding night working as outlined above in relation to internationalfacing captives and third-party call centres. Other research also highlights a more temporally nuanced set of work and employment realities for India’s educated call centre workers than is typically portrayed in media and policy discourses. In a 2007 paper entitled

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‘Urban Youth’s New Emerging Choices for Career Making’, the president of India’s Associated Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM), Venugopal Dhoot, suggests that young Indian graduates in pursuit of improved pay, working conditions and lifestyle are ‘switching over’ from call centres into other key growth industries in India’s new service economy, specifically: aviation, hospitality, retail, animation, news agencies and electronic media. While the empirical evidence base for this paper is unclear, this assertion nevertheless underlines a crucial conceptual point: that too many studies examine call centres in isolation (from which workers are lost), rather than as one component of India’s multi-sector new service economy through which mobile workers move. Our own research has demonstrated that some call centre agents in the National Capital Region are able to circumvent limits to promotion and career progression within individual call centres by instead building career ladders across multiple call centres (see James and Vira, forthcoming). Interrogating the claims made by ASSOCHAM, the paper we present here explores the cross-sectoral job mobility of Indian workers exiting the call centre industry. We document empirically the relative significance of the sectoral destinations these workers move to immediately after exiting call centre employment; the specific job roles they have secured; the pay increases they have achieved; and the self-identified skills learned through call centre work that are recognized as transferable to other sectors of India’s new service economy. Our analysis is based on the labour market experiences of a sample of 250 ex-call centre workers in India’s National Capital Region, which has been widely identified as a major established (or Tier 1) Indian call centre hub alongside Bangalore and Mumbai. Importantly, our results suggest that the bleak picture painted by Pradhan and Abraham (2005) of young ex-call centre workers unskilled for employment in any other sector may be somewhat one-sided.

METHODS AND EVIDENCE BASE

Fieldwork was conducted in India’s National Capital Region (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon) in five phases: July 2006, December 2006, May 2007, November 2007 and August 2008. In total, forty-two in-depth interviews (each lasting one to two hours) were conducted with call centre agents, managers, ex-call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries engaged in the training, recruitment and placement of call centre workers and ex-call centre workers, and from companies who target ex-call centre workers as part of their recruitment strategies (Table 1).7 7. Interview themes relevant to this article include agents’ family background, training, employment history, experience of call centre work, career progression and collectivization preferences.


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Table 1. Summary of Fieldwork and Research Participant Sample in India’s “National Capital Region (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon): July 2006–August 2008” Targeted Cohort

Job Roles in Cohort Sample

Employer Types Covered by Cohort Sample

Ex-call centre workers 6 interviews 250 survey participants (August 2008)

Former Customer Care Executives, Team Leaders and Process Trainers

Large (1000+ seats) 3rd party and in-house multinationals; smaller 3rd party and in-house Indian domestics; 117 different ITES-BPO employers over course of call centre careers

Call centre workers still working in ITES-BPO sector 7 interviews with call centre agents and 2 call centre managers

Freshers and agents (various titles), Team Leaders, Manager, Director

7 different current employers: including large (1000+ seats) MNC captives and Indian third parties (UK, US Australian and European customer bases) and smaller Indian domestics (250 seats and less)

Recruitment and placement agencies 7 interviews Regional Manager, Assistant Manager Quality and Training, Resourcing Executive, Recruiters (various titles) “Voice/accent/language trainers” 8 interviews Language Trainer, Senior Language Trainer, Voice Trainer, Zonal Manager Channel Sales, CEO, Senior Trainer Corporate Labour Organizers Targeting ITES-BPO 8 interviews Delhi-based Directors, Financial Director, Lead Organizers, Secretary Local researchers focusing on ITES-BPO sector 4 interviews

Mix of small independent ‘ mom and pop’ shops serving domestic and international markets, and larger local subsidiaries of multinational companies

UNITES Pro, ITPF, New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI)

Researchers in local economic development agencies, labour research organizations and NGOs

This article also draws on a regional survey of ex-call centre workers in Noida and Gurgaon which explored workers’ educational and social backgrounds; pre-call centre employment history; call centre employment history, including internal and lateral promotions; call centre work exit motivations and post-call centre employment; and call centre training and perceived applicability of call centre skills to subsequent job roles and sectoral destinations. A series of access constraints prevented us from administering

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the survey directly in the field.8 To overcome these constraints we used an experienced local team of fieldworkers from the Indian Market Research Bureau (fifteen male, five female) whose demographic characteristics allowed them to circumvent many of these barriers to access.9 In order to ensure a broad cross-section of ex-call centre workers in the National Capital Region, multiple recruitment quotas were used. In Phase I, a database of ex-call centre employees was generated from male and female call centre workers currently working in the ITES-BPO sector at the time of the survey (August 2008), in a mix of domestic (50 per cent) and foreign-owned (50 per cent) call centres in Noida and Gurgaon. A further database of ex-call centre worker contacts (all of whom had left call centre employment within the last three years) was generated, ensuring that contacts came from no more than fifteen current call centre workers working together in any one single call centre. In Phase II of the survey, the databases created in Phase I were used to interview a stratified sample (N = 250) of ex-call centre workers according to a set of intended quotas: most recent location of call centre employment (Noida 50 per cent, Gurgaon 50 per cent); male 50 per cent, female 50 per cent; 0–1 yrs of call centre experience 33 per cent, 1–3 yrs of call centre experience 33 per cent, 3+ yrs of call centre experience 33 per cent. To avoid an inadvertent bias in favour of agents subsequently entering higher-end labour market positions, we sought to capture as wide a set of post-call centre labour market or training experiences as possible. This was achieved through targeting — at the survey pre-recruitment stage — equal numbers of male and female call centre agents currently working in domestic-facing and international-facing call centres (with the former widely regarded within India’s ITES-BPO sector as providing fewer highprofile jobs than the latter). We also targeted current call centre workers across a range of employers in two call centre suburb clusters in the National Capital Region (Noida and Gurgaon) to avoid too narrow a geographic base for our database. Moreover, by quota sampling ex-call centre workers with a range of total call centre industry employment tenures, we avoided the potential bias towards higher-end jobs which may have been generated had we focused only on ex-call centre workers with above-average call centre industry employment tenures (c. two years). An indication that we were not disproportionately identifying ex-call centre workers with high skill sets is that, of our final sample of 250, about 15 per cent (n = 37) were still engaged in a process of job search at the time of the survey.

8. Access constraints resulted from corporate security outside call centres in the wake of labour poaching by rival firms, increasing concerns about corporate confidentiality due to documented cases of agent fraud, and the Mumbai terrorist attacks in July 2006. 9. Fieldworkers waited outside call centres and approached workers during break times and shift changes. None of the fieldwork team had worked previously in the ITES-BPO industry and none of the respondents were known to field agents previously.


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Overall, despite our research partnership with the locally-experienced IMRB team, it proved very difficult and time consuming to generate labour mobility data on ex-call centre workers — which in itself emphasized the dearth of previous research in this area. A core problem was that the longer the period that had elapsed since quitting call centre employment, the more difficult it proved to track down a particular individual. Yet, it was arguably these respondents who would be most useful in finding out more about the benefits of call centre skills in subsequent careers. Consequently, while 205 of our respondents had quit call centre employment 0–2 years previously, only 45 had 2–3 years post-call centre work experience. Ultimately, the survey yielded a dataset of 250 ex-call centre workers moving between 117 different ITES-BPO employers over the course of their call centre careers, and to 44 different job role types across 21 different named sectors immediately subsequent to leaving call centre employment. In addition, 24 per cent of ex-call centre workers in the respondent sample had also held jobs prior to entering the call centre industry in 18 different named sectors. The majority of our worker sample had been born and schooled in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, or Bihar.10

ANALYSIS

How Representative is our National Capital Region Sample of Ex-Call Centre Workers?

In order to establish the credibility and potential generalizibility of the range of post-call centre job roles, sectoral destinations, post-call centre pay increases and transferable call centre skills identified by our sample of research participants, the social demographic of our ex-call centre worker sample and its relation to that of previous analyses has to be noted. Our analysis is not based on an unusual sample of exceptionally highly skilled, highly qualified, older, elite workers divergent from that which previous research depicts as the ‘typical call centre worker’ (Batt et al., 2005). A summary of the characteristics of our NCR ex-call centre workers sample is shown in Table 2. In short, the ex-call centre workers comprising our NCR sample are young and well educated, with a slightly higher proportion of men (53 per cent) than women (47 per cent), and with the majority (81 per cent) speaking Hindi as

10. Place of birth, major locations by state: Delhi 140; Uttar Pradesh 33; Haryana 19; Bihar 23; Orissa 9. Others (Uttaranchal 6; West Bengal 5; Assam 3; Himachal 3; Punjab 3; Maharashtra 2; Nepal 1; Jharkhand 1; Rajasthan 1). Place of schooling (senior years) major locations by state: Delhi 147; Uttar Pradesh 32; Haryana 18; Bihar 19; Orissa 10. Others (Uttaranchal 5; West Bengal 5; Punjab 3; Jharkhand 3; Assam 2; Himachal 2; Maharashtra 1; Nepal 1; Rajasthan 1).

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Table 2. Summary of Respondent Characteristics (August 2008 Ex-Call Centre Worker Survey, NCR) (N = 250)

Gender Male Female Time since last worked in call centre 0–2 yrs 2–3 yrs Duration of total call centre employment < 2 yrs 2–4 yrs 4 yrs + Education Undergraduate degree held at time of call centre entry Postgraduate degree also held at time of call centre entry Call centre agent role as first job First call centre employer: MNC captive MNC third party Indigenous third party Indian domestic Average age first call centre job (yrs) Average age quitting last call centre job Average wage in first call centre job

N

%

133 117

53 47

205 45

82 18

141 93 23

56 37 9

124 15 189

50 6 76

27 91 9 123 21 yrs 8 mo 23 yrs 6 mo Rs 10,308 / mo

11 36 4 49 – – –

their first language.11 The average age at the start of their first call centre job was 21 years 8 months, with 50 per cent entering call centre employment with a high school diploma as their highest qualification. The remaining 50 per cent had undergraduate degrees at the start of their first call centre job (15 of whom also had postgraduate degrees), with the majority (61 per cent) of those educated workers having attended Delhi University. The majority of our sample first secured call centre employment in either domestic call centres (49 per cent) or international third-party call centres (36 per cent). The ex-call centre workers in the NCR sample also come from families in which the parents are similarly well educated (Table 3): 60 per cent have a father with a bachelor’s degree or higher (indeed 31 per cent also have a mother with a bachelor’s degree or higher). In addition, the majority (70 per cent) of workers in the ex-call centre worker survey sample identified their father’s profession as ‘businessman’ or ‘mid- or seniorlevel manager/executive’; and 89 per cent identified their mother’s profession as ‘unemployed/full-time homemaker’ (Table 4). In sum, the majority of respondents who comprise our ex-call centre agent sample in the NCR are members of India’s urban middle class youth. In terms of their 11. First language/mother tongue (N = 250): major group Hindi 203; other significant groups: Punjabi 17, Bengali 7, Oriya 9.


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Table 3. NCR Ex-Call Centre Worker Survey Sample — Parents’ Highest Educational Qualifications (N = 250)

No formal education Primary School – up to 5th standard Middle School – 8th standard Secondary School – 10th standard Senior Secondary School – 12th standard Graduate Post Graduate

Father

Mother

1 2 5 32 60 122 26

1 15 16 84 53 65 13

Table 4. NCR Ex-Call Centre Worker Survey Sample — Parents’ Occupations (N = 250)

Unskilled Worker Skilled Manual Worker Petty Trader Businessman / Businesswoman Industrialist Self-employed Professional Clerical/ Salesman Supervisor Officer/Executive – junior level Officer/Executive – middle/senior level Unemployed / full-time homemaker

Father

Mother

0 6 3 125 2 8 4 19 27 50 0

3 4 0 9 1 0 0 0 6 4 223

remuneration, the mean entry-level call centre wage for the sample was Rs 10,038 per month, with the majority (76 per cent) entering as call centre agents. Analysis indicates that half of all workers in each of the three educational cohorts secured their first call centre job with domestic call centres. However, while the more prestigious international facing captive call centres accounted for 26 per cent of the first call centre jobs secured by the postgraduate degree cohort, this was less for the undergraduate degree cohort (13 per cent), and the high school cohort (9 per cent). So how representative is our survey respondent profile? While most of the research on Indian call centres is based upon qualitative approaches involving small numbers of workers (Thite and Russell, 2008: 618), there are a limited number of Indian call centre worker surveys with large sample sizes with which a meaningful comparison can be made. First, the characteristics of this survey sample are consistent with the India findings from the recent Global Call Centre Industry Project (Batt et al., 2005). Batt et al.’s study involved an on-site survey of sixty call centres in Bangalore, Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata, covering a total core workforce of 31,698 employees. Our NCR respondent profile corresponds with this national sample across multiple dimensions, including: education (65 per cent

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of managers in international call centres reported that the typical call centre employee has a bachelor’s degree); gender (51 per cent female, 49 per cent male); typical call centre worker pay (Rs 10,087 per month in international call centres); and employer type (74 per cent international, 26 per cent domestic). Second, our NCR respondent profile also reflects that of Taylor et al.’s (2009) survey of 879 call centre workers in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Mumbai and Delhi/NCR. This is evident in respect of: gender (male 52 per cent, female 48 per cent); age (average 24.3 years); and industry tenure (17.4 months). And third, the NCR respondent profile (August 2008) is also consistent with our earlier survey of 510 call centre workers (including seventy-seven ex-call centre workers) in the NCR in May 2007 (see James and Vira, 2010) in terms of: gender (51 per cent male, 49 per cent female); age (24.3 years); and entry-level pay (Rs 9,272 per month), albeit with lower levels of cross-firm job-hopping whilst in the sector. On this basis therefore, we are confident that our subsequent analysis is not based on an abnormal or unusual sample of call centre workers. However, given the relatively small size of our sample (N = 250) in relation to the overall numbers employed in the industry, it must be recognized that any conclusions we draw here need to be corroborated further by more extensive large-sample surveys consisting of similar cohorts of ex-call centre workers.

Evidencing Ex-Call Centre Workers’ Cross-Sectoral Labour Market Transitions in the NCR

Despite the sizeable body of scholarly literature that now exists around the lived realities of call centre work and employment for Indian workers, much of it remains analytically delimited by the temporal and spatial boundaries of the call centre workplace and its consequent work-to-home spillovers (e.g. Bhatnagar, 2007; Budhwar et al., 2006a, 2006b; Russell and Thite, 2008; Taylor and Bain, 2005).12 As a result, in much of this work, call centre workers do not enter the analysis until they enter a particular firm, and likewise, are lost from the analysis when they leave a particular firm. In this section we take workers as our primary focus of analysis and adopt a longitudinal work history approach in order to explore agents’ lived experience of cross-sectoral employment transition as they exit call centre employment; the jobs roles and sectoral destinations that they are subsequently engaged in, post-exit; and how those compare with the vertical markets in which these workers were employed during call centre employment. The NCR data indicate average call centre employment tenures of 22.6 months (modal year of first call centre employment 2006; modal year of 12. Indeed some of this work relies narrowly on managerial input in relation to survey data collection (e.g. Batt et al., 2006).


463

Table 5. Comparing the Call Centre Employment Tenures and Exit Motivations of Different Worker Cohorts (August 2008 NCR Survey) Highest Qualification (call centre labour market entry)

Measure: Average duration of call centre employment Highest cited reason/s for quitting call centre work

All (N = 250)

Men (N = 133)

Women (N = 117)

High school diploma (N = 126)

Undergrad degree (N = 109)

Postgrad degree (N = 15)

23 mo

20 mo

25 mo

26 mo

19 mo

17 mo

‘always a short term career option’

call centre industry exit 2008). Agents were asked to indicate their primary motivations for quitting, which in rank order were identified as: ‘was always a short-term career proposition’ (113); ‘did not provide adequate career progression and promotion’ (44); ‘did not provide opportunities to develop externally valued expertise and competencies’ (37); ‘high stress levels’ (24); and ‘unfavourable work-life balance, working hours’ (17). These ranked exit motivations were consistent across the female and male groups. Also, while these exit motivations are constant across each of the educational cohorts, the data indicate a decreasing average duration of call centre employment with increased educational qualifications (Table 5). Thus while high school graduates exhibit an average call centre employment tenure of 26 months, this compares with 19 months for agents with an undergraduate degree, and 17 months for agents with a postgraduate degree. Subsequent to quitting call centre employment, the largest single post-call centre employment destination of the 250 ex-call centre workers in the NCR September 2008 survey was further education and training, accounting for 20 per cent of the worker sample. The survey data indicate that 46 workers (21 women, 25 men) enrolled in further study immediately after quitting call centre work, 32 of whom already had a degree at ITES-BPO exit which suggests that they proceeded to embark on graduate study or some form of professional training. In addition, 41 workers gained their degree during call centre employment. These figures are consistent with the motivations respondents advanced for joining call centres; 139 respondents (56 per cent) listed ‘to fund studies’ as one of their top three motivations for entering the ITES-BPO sector in the first place (Table 6). Of the 46 ex-call centre workers who undertook further study immediately after quitting call centre employment, 59 per cent ranked ‘to fund studies’ as one of their top three reasons for joining the ITES-BPO sector in the first place. Of the 41 workers who gained their degree during call centre employment, two thirds (67 per cent) ranked ‘to fund studies’ as one of their top three choices for joining


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Table 6. NCR Ex-Call Centre Worker Survey Sample – Most Important Motivations for Entering the ITES-BPO Sector (N = 250) Motivation No other alternatives Good starting salary To gain international business experience Stop-gap job To fund studies To help out parents BPO as long-term career

Rank 1 n

Rank 2 n

Rank 3 n

47 123 23 10 28 9 5

13 48 69 26 49 27 9

13 29 37 12 62 60 23

the ITES-BPO sector in the first place. These figures on workers’ stated use of ITES-BPO salaries to help fund further studies therefore compel us to challenge over-generalized criticisms of call centre salaries as ‘immoral fast money’ that merely fuels short-term irresponsible spending and consumer debt among the young, aspirational graduate workforce at the expense of their long-term futures (see also Patel, 2010). The results therefore indicate that further study is the most important post-call centre employment destination for our survey sample immediately after quitting call centre employment. For those members of the survey sample who did not engage in further study subsequent to quitting call centre employment, the majority found subsequent employment in a diverse range of sectors and job roles. The data also offer some insight into the time that elapsed between quitting call centre employment and securing the first post-call centre employment role: of those 45 ex-call centre workers identified as engaged in post-call centre employment job search, only 8 were doing so more than three months after quitting call centre employment. The five most significant post-call centre employment sector job destinations (see Table 7) are banking, insurance, information technology and marketing and finance. Other identified sub-sectors within India’s new service economy to which members of our NCR survey sample of ex-call centre agents moved include airlines, hotels, healthcare, real estate, retail and media. Importantly the diversity of these post-call centre sectoral destinations is consistent with data gathered through in-depth interviews (2006–2008), which in addition also identified other ex-call centre workers employed in the ITES-BPO language training sector, ITES-BPO recruitment and placement agencies (with some of those ITES-BPO training firms themselves set up by former call centre agents). Moreover, the survey and interview data also highlight a diversity of job roles in which former call centre agents were immediately employed subsequent to their exiting call centre employment, ranging from managerial roles, to senior executive, supervisory and team leader positions in a variety of identified processes, including sales executive, business manager, insurance adviser, operations manager, office coordinator,


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Table 7. Ex-Call Centre Workers’ First Jobs Post-call Centre Employment – Named Sectors and Common Job Titles Identified (N = 250) n Information Technology Hardware Repair / Operator, Computer Operator, Systems Administrator, Vice President, Senior Engineer Banking Sales Executive, Team Leader, Executive, Senior Department Manager, Assistant Manager, Business Manager, Senior Manager, BSR, Officer Coordinator Insurance Sub-agent, Operation Manager, Office Coordinator, Agent, Insurance Adviser, Senior Departmental Manager Finance Executive, Junior Officer, Assistant Manager Airlines Executive Hotels Assistant Manager Telecommunications Promoter, Supervisor, Executive, Customer Care Executive, Data Process Engineer, Sales Executive Healthcare services Nurse Education Teacher, Lecturer

n

11

Construction Supervisor

28

Marketing Sales Executive, Sales Manager, Office Coordinator, Executive

16

Real estate Sales Executive, Assistant Manager

4

10

Retail Operations Manager, Customer Care Executive Travel

2

Media Senior Counter Executive Import / Export Senior Counter Executive

1

Merchant Navy Cadet Security Customer Communications Executive Law Customer Communications Executive Other Sectors (not named) Assistant Manager, Senior Engineer, Stenographer, Senior Counter Executive, Senior Manager, Business Manager, Receptionist, Sales Executive, Job Search – still in job search at time of survey (August 2008) . . . having quit centre employment summer 2008 (May–August) having quit call centre employment prior to May 2008

3

1 2 11

3 9

Shipping Team Leader, Cadet

2

Full-time homemaker

15

Further study [18 of whom had completed further study by time of survey, proceeding to paid employment in: insurance (5), banking (3), education (2), retail (2), import-export (2), telecommunications (1), airlines (1), shipping (1), marketing (1)]

46

1

10

3

4

1

1

16

37 8

customer communications executive and data process engineer. While men and women are found in each of these post-call centre employment destinations, one important exception is the full-time homemaker category, occupied exclusively by 15 females and representing 6 per cent of the total


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Table 8. Major Destinations of Survey Respondents’ Former Call Centre Colleagues who also Exited Call Centre Employment

Information Technology Banking Insurance Finance Airlines Hotels Telecommunications Healthcare services Education Logistics

Rank 1 (N = 250)

Rank 2 (N = 113)

34 67 16 9 4 1 22 2 14 –

– 12 16 10 6 1 18 – 2 3

Hospitality Marketing Real estate Retail Travel Media Security Import-export Other sectors (not named)

Rank 1 (N = 250)

Rank 2 (N = 113)

1 8 6 3 2 1 1 – 58

3 14 4 6 2 4 – 2 10

female survey cohort.13 Expanding the evidence base further, the survey also asked respondents to rank significance of identified post-call centre employment destinations for their former call centre colleagues who had also exited call centre employment (see Table 8). These identified destinations are consistent with those in Table 7, ranked in order of importance these were identified as: banking, IT, telecoms, insurance, education, finance and marketing. These identified post-call centre job destinations exhibit an interesting series of ovelaps with the vertical markets in which our ex-call centre agent sample was previously employed as voice-based agents in the ITES-BPO sector. The data suggest that of the 153 agents who proceeded to paid employment outside the home within three months of exiting the ITES-BPO sector, 28 per cent moved to new roles in sectors in which they had previous experience as call centre agents, specifically in: banking and capital markets, insurance, finance, information technology, telecommunications and travel. Although Batt et al. (2005) suggest that (captive) call centre jobs in India do provide access to higher positions in parent companies, our findings show meaningful links between the vertical markets that call centre workers work in and the sectors that they subsequently move to after quitting call centre employment. These types of career advancement opportunities are not immediately visible in analyses that focus on individual firms or call centres, further underscoring the added value of our worker-centric analysis.14 13. Patel’s (2010) study offers a useful means of interpreting this pattern, in relation to the disruption of call centre work on parent–child relationships in the household. Our own in-depth interviews also highlighted the challenges faced by female agents in juggling the majority burden of childcare with call centre shift timings, and its role in their eventual decision to quit call centre employment. 14. Indeed, our alternative worker-focused analysis also allowed us to examine agents’ precall centre employment histories: 61 (or 24 per cent) of the ex-call centre workers in the respondent sample had also held jobs prior to entering the call centre industry in 18 different named sectors: airlines, car industry, banking, construction, education, finance, healthcare,


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Table 9. Comparing Call Centre Exit Salaries and Pay Hikes Across Worker Cohorts (August 2008 NCR Survey) Highest Qualification (at time of call centre employment exit) All N = 250

Men N = 133

Women N = 117

High school diploma N = 85

Undergrad degree or higher N = 165

Average pay last call centre job Rs / mo

10,836

10,855

10,810

10,857

10,754

Average pay first job after exiting call centre employment Rs / mo

13,533

13,533

13,384

8,873

15,552

Call centre employment exit pay hike Rs / mo Rs p.a.

2,697 32,364

2,678 32,136

2,574 30,888

Measure

−1,984 −23,808

4,798 57,576

Indian Call Centre Employment as Career Advantage? Post-Exit Pay Progression

If employment in India’s ITES-BPO sector confers no subsequent labour market advantage on young graduates, we might expect ex-call centre workers to move to new jobs without any significant pay increase. The average pay increase when call centre agents quit call centre employment as revealed in our dataset is from Rs. 130,032 p.a. to Rs. 160,236 p.a. (see Table 9). These figures are unchanged when comparing men and women separately. While the scale of these call centre exit pay rises are generally alike for men and women (Table 9), it is important to note a series of nuanced education effects. The post-call centre exit pay hikes are greatest for ex-call centre workers with degrees who go on to assume post-call centre positions with an average monthly salary of Rs 15,552. For those without degrees, a departure from call centre employment in the ITES-BPO sector actually represents a short-term reduction in pay — but remember, around half (46) of the 85 IT, insurance, marketing, printing, real estate, shipping, telecommunications, travel. The data indicate a wide range of jobs held among this cohort prior to call centre employment with no dominant pre-call centre feeder job roles identifiable. The diversity of pre-call centre job roles included: accountant, assistant manager, client service executive, computer operator, teacher, junior officer, machine operator, mobile phone activation agent, security guard, receptionist, sales executive and systems administrator.

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Table 10. Transferable Skills Learned through Voice-based BPO work Self-identified by Ex-Call Centre Worker Sample (August 2008 survey, N = 250) Skill

1st

2nd

3rd

Time management Multi-tasking Experience of an international business environment Improved communication skills How to perform well at interview Technical knowledge essential for my current job

92 26 25 80 18 4

25 48 39 70 51 14

33 53 24 44 67 24

workers who had entered and exited call centre employment without degrees, enrolled in further study immediately after quitting call centre employment. For these individuals, the opportunity to engage in higher education (which represents a long-term investment in their skills, employability and earning potential) would arguably not have been available had they not had the financial cushion provided by their relatively high wages through call centre work. The costs associated with funding education, as well as the living costs in a metropolitan Indian city, and the opportunity costs associated with foregone employment options, imply that the decision to undertake further study is an expensive one. For the 39 respondents who exited call centre employment without degrees and who did not proceed to further study, the average first post-call centre wage of Rs. 8,873 per month nevertheless represents a 50 per cent increase on the average pre-call centre wage of Rs. 5,906 per month that members of this cohort were earning two years previously. At Rs. 106,476 p.a., it also represents an individual income that is 18 per cent greater than the average Indian middle-class household income as defined by the NCAER. It is on this basis that we can partly understand the potential career advantage of Indian call centre employment. Indian Call Centre Employment as Career Advantage? Development of Self-identified Transferable Skills

The data therefore indicate that while some ex-call centre agents move into further education subsequent to quitting call centre employment, others are able to move into a variety of job roles in a diversity of other sectors in India’s new service economy and achieve significant pay increases in doing so. Importantly, the data also indicate that the ability to do so is based on a series of skills learned in call centres which former agents and their subsequent employers identify as transferable beyond the call centre workplace. The top three voice-based BPO transferable skills as identified by the NCR ex-call centre agent sample (Table 10) are: time management; improved communication skills; and performing well in interviews. In contrast, development of


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Table 11. Self-identified Voice-based BPO Transferable Skills Learned: Variation by Primary Work Function (3 dominant cohorts) Primary work function (N = 179) Inbound customer service (N = 68)

Outbound sales (N = 72)

Customer complaints (N = 39)

Top-ranked Transferrable Skill

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd


43 12 9

9 24 18

38 10 15

7 19 15

36 10 10

15 18 13

29 3 1.5

28 21 0

49 6 3

36 13 10

33 8 0

26 28 0

‘technical knowledge essential for my current job’ was ranked lowest. Significantly, these rankings are consistent across the male and female cohorts. They are also consistent across the different primary work functions evident in our worker sample (e.g. inbound customer service; also outbound sales) (Table 11). The data also indicate that ex-call centre worker perceptions of transferable skills are not limited to international-facing call centres but apply also to domestic-facing call centres (Table 12). Table 12. Self-identified Transferable Voice-based BPO Skills Learned: Variation by Call Centre Employer Type (for meaningful comparison, targets workers with experience of one type of call centre employer only, N = 212) Call centre EMPLOYER International facing

India facing

Captive (N = 27)

Third party (N = 82)

Domestic players (N = 103)

Top ranked transferrable skill

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

2nd


41 7 11 33 7 4

11 15 22 37 11 4

37 12 9 30 7 1

6 22 23 21 24 2

41 9 13 28 6 2

11 18 6 36 21 6

Note: Eight of the MNC third party call centres were joint Indian-foreign owned.

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The in-depth interviews offer further insight into the qualitative nature of the transferable skills self-identified by Indian ex-call centre workers: It helps you immensely. There is a mind-set that if you do BPO then you’ll have nothing else to do but there are people with MBAs, graduates, engineers. So definitely for me I would say a lot of learning patience with work, a lot of time management skills, and most of it I can apply to my new company here also. (Female former call centre language trainer, Delhi) One big thing with BPO is self-dependence, it teaches you that at the end of the day it’s your work, your job, you have to deliver, that is something that is really good about the BPO sector. (Female ex-call centre language trainer, Delhi) Everyone should work in a BPO for one or two years absolutely! One key skill set that everybody acquires if you work in a BPO is multi-tasking: you know how to do 10 tasks in a set frame of 9 hours. And that actually gives you an edge — so many people have the excuse at work ‘Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t have time, I’m so busy’, but if you have learned this skill of multi-tasking it really helps you, you become very disciplined. (Female former call centre agent, Delhi)

The development of these self-identified transferable skills can be understood in relation to the types of training that agents receive, specifically the relative combination of: (i) firm-specific training, in which agents learn skills that are of use in the call centre in which they are presently employed, such as the structure and content of a firm’s information systems or a specific product’s features, service agreements, pricing, promotions; (ii) sector-specific training, in which agents acquire skills of use in their current call centre and to other call centres operating in the same vertical market, such as customer-specific knowledge regarding the demand characteristics of particular individuals or market segments; and (iii) general training, which increases agents’ transferable skills such as language skills, customer service skills, and problem solving techniques (see Batt et al., 2005: 11; Sieben and De Grip, 2003: 259). The NCR survey focused on the types of initial post-recruitment training received in agents’ first call centre job (Table 13), which ranges from 6.6 weeks in the international-facing Indian third-party call centres (consistent with Batt et al., 2005) to 4 weeks in the domestic call centres (higher than that documented by Batt et al., 2005). As shown in Table 13, agents across all three main types of call centre employer identify the dominant focus of the training they received as general training (customer service, ‘com skills’, and voice and accent), plus firm/vertical market-specific training (nature of process). The interviews also revealed that the transferable skills developed in new hires through general training are delivered using a mix of internal training and external training agencies. These external agencies also described the kinds of generic skills that they seek to develop in call centre agents and their broader significance: There are some common elements to all courses which will be pronunciation, and we teach them phonetics, the phonetic alphabet, and focus on word stress intonation patterns, and then


471

Table 13. Duration and Types of Initial Post-Recruitment Training Received from First Call Centre Employer. FIRST CALL CENTRE EMPLOYER (N = 250) International facing

Ave duration initial post-recruitment training (days) Type of training received (% yes): Nature of process Customer service Communication skills Voice and accent training Culture training Keyboard skills Numeracy

India facing

Captive (N = 27)

Third party (N = 100)

Domestic players (N = 123)

Total (N = 250)

26 (5.2 weeks)

33 (6.6 weeks)

20 (4 weeks)

26 (5.2 weeks)

41 56 41

51 62 34

38 67 46

44 64 40

26

38

30

33

11 22 0

7 10 3

1 7 0

4 10 1

also things like active listening skills, and what happens if you don’t understand somebody, how you deal with that, and questioning techniques. (Manager, call centre language training agency, NCR) The BPO is very good for the guys because you learn a lot of world class skill sets: how to manage process, how to communicate effectively . . . they’re actually enhancing transferable skill sets that they can apply to another job outside BPO. (CEO, call centre language training, NCR [previously UK]) Most of the skills we teach are transferable, the generic soft skills, the communication. . . . (T)he skill-sets you learn in BPO are global skill-sets: how to conduct yourself, crosscultural communication, the way a professionally run company is operated, questioning and listening skills, business skills. So I see it as a wealth of opportunity to get a basic set of skills which they can use and apply to anything they move to. (CEO, call centre language training agency, NCR)

In relation to the development of these skills, survey participants were also asked how far they agreed that their experience of call centre work had given them a competitive advantage over their co-workers who have no experience of working in a call centre. Strikingly, 87 per cent of respondents agreed, only 5 per cent disagreed (N = 250). Importantly, these worker claims are consistent with the assessments made by a number of employers of ex-call centre workers whom we also interviewed: One of the reasons we’ve ended up taking a lot of people out of international BPOs is because of their communication skills — they’re very, very good at interacting with people, and they’re used to working at quite a high intensity, so they don’t mind working long hours. They’ve got a lot of transferable skills. (Manager, Language Training, British Council, Delhi)

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Thus ex-call centre agents, trainers, and subsequent employers who took part in our study outlined a set of transferable skills which, in their own words, can be summarized as: ‘high intensity multi-tasking’, ‘time management’, ‘cross-cultural communication skills’, ‘questioning and active listening skills’, ‘customer relationship management’, ‘self-conduct in a professional business environment’, ‘self-dependent working’ and ‘patience with clients’. Importantly, these call centre skills as identified by our Indian sample parallel the largely unacknowledged set of social, emotional, and coordination skills that are now being recognized by some scholars as central to the delivery of effective interactive call centre service work in the Global North (see Korczynski, 2005 for a useful introduction to these debates). Much more than merely ‘keyboard skills, basic numeracy and the ability to move around a system’ (Callaghan and Thompson, 2002: 239), these skills include ‘emotional labour’ capabilities (Hochschild, 1983) such as an ability to remain calm, active listening, patience and empathy (Frenkel et al., 1999: 70; Jenkins et al., 2010). They also include ‘extensive but under-recognized discretionary skills in terms of constructively managing the call process and coping with the work’ (Bolton and Houlihan, 2007: 259), as agents must subtly take control of calls, meet their time targets by disguising the fact that they are wrapping up the details of the previous call, and steering customers to provide only essential information without coming across as manipulative (Wray-Bliss, 2001: 40–42). It is on this basis that, for some scholars, call centre work is ultimately premised on agents’ developing ‘articulation work skills’, based on ‘a blend of emotional, cognitive, technical and time management skills, performed often at speed and at varying levels of complexity and autonomy’ (Hampson and Junor, 2005: 176). These skills are necessary in order that agents effectively coordinate multifaceted interactions across people, information and technology; and in the face of contingencies, maintain a flow of conversation with the customer whilst processing data accurately, managing emotion and balancing conflicting demands for efficiency and quality of service (ibid.: 178; Hampson et al., 2009).

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

This article reflects on the results from a labour mobility survey of 250 ex-call centre agents in India’s National Capital Region, conducted towards the end of 2008. Unlike earlier studies, which have focused primarily on the experience of workers within individual call centres, we have examined the labour market experiences of call centre agents after they have left the voice-based ITES-BPO sector. Given the relatively short average duration of employment in the industry (a little under two years), this longitudinal approach helps to better understand the wider impacts of call centre


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employment in India as young call centre agents subsequently move into — and out of — other sectors of India’s rapidly growing new service economy. Our findings suggest some grounds for cautious optimism concerning the wider impacts of India’s voice-based ITES-BPO sector on employment opportunities. Our data support earlier studies which suggest call centres provide relatively high-paying professional jobs to some young people. In addition, our research participants also suggest that their work experience and training in the call centre industry gave them valuable transferable skills, translating into a subsequent career advantage. This is reinforced by our survey data which show that graduates who quit the call centre industry often go on to higher-paid jobs in other sectors, including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications. Our cohort of call centre agents with high school qualifications typically left the voice-based ITES-BPO industry to pursue further studies, an opportunity they felt was made possible by savings from their call centre jobs. Our data on the relatively short tenures of workers in call centres appear to reinforce the concerns that have been expressed (especially among Human Resource managers) regarding worker turnover and high rates of worker attrition in the industry in general. An interesting implication of this rapid turnover of call centre agents through the ITES-BPO sector is that static estimates of employment within the industry underestimate the number of people who have actually worked in a call centre at some stage of their careers. The industry was estimated to be offering employment opportunities to around 1.4 million workers in 2010 (Nivsarkar, 2010), which is a tiny proportion of the number expected to be seeking work in the coming years — official estimates suggest that there are likely to be 63.5 million new entrants to the working population between 2011 and 2016 (Government of India, 2010). While acknowledging that the sector in itself cannot meet India’s demand for decent work for increasing numbers of its youth, we suggest that the actual impact of the sector may have been slightly under-estimated. To really understand the contribution of this industry, the work-life histories of employees as they move into and out of the sector via different means documented in this paper need to be taken into consideration. Thus, using Nasscom’s annual ITES-BPO employment data for 2003–2008 (NasscomEverest, 2008: 28), of which ‘60–65% of services fall within the call centre space’ (Taylor et al., 2008: 38), and assuming that half of those employees are replaced each year, we estimate that by the time of our study, around 2.9 million educated, urban middle class Indians had passed through the Indian call centre industry in the previous five years alone, and hence had potentially been exposed to the kinds of pay and skill development opportunities documented in this paper. The Indian call centre industry is therefore better conceptualized as an important skills training ground rather than a career end in itself. However, this positive account of the long-term impact of call centre employment is not intended to deny the negative experiences of agents

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employed in the sector (see, for example, Noronha and D’Cruz, 2006; Ofreneo et al., 2007; Taylor and Bain, 2005). Our objective has been to come to a more subtle understanding of call centre work and employment in India than what has been achieved by the more extreme accounts that argue that the industry represents no more than a neocolonial waste of India’s educated elite. The views of our research participants and their accounts of the transferable skills created through call centre work experience and training compel us to adopt a more nuanced stance on the employment opportunities provided by India’s voice-based ITES-BPO sector, and not simply to dismiss it as wasting the talents of young Indians. This is especially important in a wider context where more traditional forms of employment — in the manufacturing sector and in the public sector — have not expanded adequately to absorb these young workers, thereby resulting in their flight towards the service sector. If these are the sectors in which India’s youth are finding jobs, we need to examine the wider implications of these employment patterns more carefully. While our study opens up new ways of thinking about work and employment in India’s call centres, it also creates interesting possibilities for future research. Emerging evidence suggests that due to increasing costs in the Tier I metropolitan cities, some BPOs are establishing call centres in Tier II and Tier III towns and cities, especially in states like Haryana and Karnataka (see Everest Group 2008; The Economic Times, 2008). It would be interesting to examine whether BPOs in these locations offer opportunities for youth from less privileged social backgrounds than our NCR respondents — both to enter call centre employment and to potentially use it as a springboard for subsequent higher-paying roles in other sectors. Are the patterns of employment, average tenures, worker experiences and subsequent mobility that we have documented here likely to be replicated in these smaller urban centres? Moreover, it is particularly important to pay further attention to the social and economic backgrounds of those who are able to secure employment in the sector. To what extent are the opportunities that we have observed in India’s NCR restricted to a relatively limited elite, or does the ITES-BPO sector display evidence of greater social inclusion — especially with regard to historically marginalized groups, lower castes, religious minorities and those from the rural hinterland? There is also considerable scope for future research on worker mobility patterns more widely within India’s new service economy, as well as the institutions which mediate the labour market movements of these workers. Future research should explore cross-sector job movements from a range of other sectoral starting points to obtain a richer picture of work patterns across the new service sectors (especially hospitality, retail, aviation, financial services and other customer-facing sectors). Are call centres unusual in their relatively high turnover, or can similar patterns be found in other sectors? There is much more to India’s new service economy than call centres — yet this has been the almost exclusive focus of analysis to date. There is also


475

scope to couple such analyses with sociological studies of the impacts of these new service sector employment opportunities on cultural orientations and social aspirations of the middle classes in urban India (see, for instance, Upadhya, 2009). Finally, the impact of the recent ‘global’ economic downturn on call centre employment and subsequent career progression in other industries needs to be understood.15 Our research shows that Indian ex-call centre workers have transferable skills. A trained cohort of voice-based BPO workers facing an international recession with transferable skillsets is likely to move into other domestic service sector industries where demand remains strong. Given that this movement into the domestic sector was already taking place during the period of our study, where the call centre industry was experiencing rapid expansion, we believe that these trends are likely to increase if the recession results in a significant contraction in the international-facing voice-based ITES-BPO sector. Future research should explore this in greater depth.

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Bhaskar Vira is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK (e-mail: [email protected]), and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. His research engages with the political economy of development, especially the changing economic dynamics of development in India, as well as the social and political dimensions of development and change. Al James is a Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK (e-mail: [email protected]). His research interests are in economic-geographical methodology and practice; gendered geographies of work-life and employment in the New Economy; the rise of India’s new service economy; and the regional cultural economy of learning, innovation and entrepreneurship.