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If statistics are anything to go by, women far outnumber men on the rolls of rural BPOs. Most companies say the glass ceiling is not a conscious creation, but also admit that women bring stability in the work environment, which, in turn, helps curb attrition. Many homemakers also form a large untapped, but cost effective talent pool. “By employing rural women, companies are also playing a role in empowering them. It also helps them cut cost of operations and attrition, besides curbing migration to over-crowded cities,” said Kiran Karnik, former Nasscom president and member of global advisory board, IDG.

 

The country has over 50 rural BPOs. Together they employ over 4,000 people. Most of these BPOs also offer convenient shift timings to women. “We mostly employ women for morning shifts. Currently, we employ about 600 people, of which nearly half are women. We are looking at increasing our employees to 2,000 by end of year. We are also planning to employ housewives who comprise of a steady talent pool in rural areas,” said Verghese Jacob, lead partner & chief integrator at Byrraju Foundation. The foundation has 10 clients including Satyam Computer Services.

 

Tata Group’s rural BPO arm is also looking at employing housewives as it is planning to ramp up its operations. “We are planning new centres in small industrial towns like Jamshedpur. The plan is to employ wives of engineers posted there. In a year we will have around 2,000 people,” said MN Rao, managing director, Tata Business Support. Currently, the group has three centres in UP, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh and employs about 500 people.

 

Women workforce is reluctant to migrate to cities in search of better salaries unlike their male counterparts. “Men mostly leave the state after their studies in search of a better career. Women, on the other hand, tend to stay back,” said Mithun Chittilapalli, director of Kerala-based Vintes. The company is part of the Rs 350-crore V-Guard group. It runs three rural BPO centres and employ 100 people. Hardly three people have left our organisation so far, he said.

 

Ashwanth G, co-founder of Desicrew, a rural BPO venture incubated by IIT-Chennai agrees with him. It has 80 employees across its seven locations and 80% of them are women.

 

“It was not a strategy as most of these women have to go through a set of selection criteria like men. However, we found that women are more family-oriented. Though they are ambitious, they tend to be with the family. This makes it easy for us to train them for complex processes as well. Our attrition rate is only 5%,” he said. The company has two “women only” centres and it also employs 30 housewives.

 

Besides, women also score over men in terms of their open mindedness and attitude. “It is easy to train women. Also, unlike men they do not consider these BPOs as a training ground for better jobs. We are in fact taking a conscious effort to include more women in our teams and our attrition rate is almost negligible,” said R Sujatha, director, Sai Seva Business Solutions.