BPO’s plan well to ride out social turmoil
By Rajiv Kumar 

The Gujjar community in North India has been organizing strikes and protests to force the Government to grant them ST status and with that more opportunities for jobs and financial upliftment.  Sadly, in the clashes between police and the Gujjars, tens of people have lost their lives.  And till recently, the BPO and IT offices in Cyber City Gurgaon severely affected.  Now the BPO’s are taking control of the situation.

The BPOs in Gurgaon have become mature enough to tackle situations like demonstrations the national capital region (NCR) cities including Gurgaon witnessed on Thursday when the Gujjar community went up in arms in support of their demands. Their road blockades and burning of tyres disrupted the free flow of traffic for IT and BPO employees.

Unlike 2007, the ITES industry had planned well for any such eventualities.  Besides creating a Conference Bridge with a toll-free number for all BPOs for the first time ever to report and discuss their problems pertaining to Thursday’s unrest, the infrastructure committees of the BPOs made elaborate arrangements for its outstation employees and booked guesthouse and arranged for extra bedding in large number on the eve of demonstrations. Food items, groceries, water and even diesel for generators were stored well in advance. 

BPOs also alerted their overseas clients in Europe and USA on the possibility of temporary business transfer (TBT) options to switch the work from Gurgaon to back up centres in other parts of India and abroad.  TBT is used to temporarily transferring business processes to redundancy centers located in trouble free locations if their operations get affected due to demonstrations.  This was the first time that the BPOs got together under the umbrella of Business Processing Industry Association of India (BPIAI) and set up a Conference Bridge with a toll-free number operating on Thursday. Widely circulated amongst its  member BPO and IT companies, the helpline number would open for five minutes every hour starting from 10.00am till evening, allowed callers to share their problems related to cab locations, road blockades, running out of diesel for generators, law and order situation and even water shortage in the wake of demonstrations. 

The cab operators also teamed up to ensure that BPO Agents were picked up and dropped on time.  They directed their drivers to take alternate routes to ferry in BPO agents from mother cities. MG Road, which was the focus of the demonstrators, was avoided by the cab drivers who took the National Highway route to enter Gurgaon. Cab drivers picked up out-station BPO agents two-hours ahead of their schedule timing on Thursday morning.  The turnout of the outstation BPO agents fell by about 30 percent while it went down by about five percent as local BPO agents staying inside Gurgaon preferred to stay away from work and enjoy the day confined to homes, listening to music, watching television or playing chess. 

However, the situation was not so pleasant in May and June last year when the same Gujjar community had held demonstrations in NCR including Gurgaon.  In 2007, the IT and BPO’s were badly affected.

In 2008, the BPO’s put their best managers to work on ensuring it was business as usual during the Gujjar strikes.  And the managers delivered by making the best out of a stressful situation.