Co-existence seems to be the new mantra in the domestic business process outsourcing industry as the outfits have started taking on employees from each other, and mind it, this is not an act of poaching.
If this trend continues, the phenomenon called poaching will soon become a thing of the past.
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As an example of this new-found bonhomie, Wipro Spectramind has taken on a significant number of employees of Sitel India, a 50:50 joint venture between the Tatas and the US-based Sitel group, following shift of an account.
Wipro Spectramind is the country's second largest third-party BPO vendor.
Earlier this year, Sitel which was servicing a few America Online processes lost some of them to Wipro Spectramind which has been AOL's long time vendor in the country.
Following the account shift, Sitel approached Spectramind with its AOL team of over 100 employees asking them to be taken on Spectramind's rolls.
This is a significant development against the backdrop that employee poaching has become a serious issue for the country's burgeoning BPO industry. Earlier this year, many of the big outsourcing firms got together and reached an informal agreement against poaching.
"Sitel India approached us with over 100 employees and due to trainability and other issues we did not take in all the people but have taken in a sizeable number of them," said Raman Roy, president and chairman of Wipro Spectramind.
Sitel spokesperson confirmed the development and added: "In an effort to provide continuity and ensure smooth transition, a small number of our trained knowledge base has been offered to support the part of the project that has been moved. This has been done in the spirit of our commitment to the client as well as to the employees."
This transfer should save Wipro Spectramind some head hunting and training costs and Sitel the trouble of re-deploying and re-training these employees.
Both companies refused to divulge the name of the client and the exact number of employees who have moved from Sitel to Spectramind.
This move is seen as a part of AOL's vendor consolidation process. The company has moved its core processes to Wipro Spectramind, one of its biggest vendors, while retaining some processes with Sitel India.
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